Deja Vu All Over Again
by Lucyrne
Summary: Resbang 2014. Genderbend AU. Long, choppy white hair. Unfocused red eyes. Sharp teeth. Yep, Soul woke up the same girl she went to bed as. So why can't she or any of her friends figure out why everything feels so wrong? And what's up with the constant, nagging sensations of deja vu?
1. Chapter 1

Cuddle material-that was the type of movie Maka had requested. After forcing her to indulge in his curiosity and sit through "The Human Centipede" a couple weeks back, Soul owed his girlfriend and meister something light-hearted and romantic. Most of their DVDs were piled around their television, but Soul kept a secret stash of date movies underneath his bed. They were mostly romcoms and animated films he saved for occasions such as this. How excited was that bookworm going to be when he popped "50 First Dates" into the DVR? Excited enough to forgive him for watching horrific foreign films, that was for sure.

The scythe reached under his bed and pulled out a slew of DVDs before finding the correct one. He got to his feet and blew on the dustjacket, but before Soul could turn to leave and show off his prize, a flash of light in the bedroom window caught his eye.

A tower of green lightning surged upward somewhere beyond the horizon. The deluge of light illuminated the indigo sky, pulsating as it jumped back and forth, up and down. Soul watched the silent spectacle, transfixed, as the lightning picked up pace, traveling from dirt to space and back again with increasing velocity, a resonance between earth and sky.

The scythe didn't know very much about physics, but he did know light always traveled faster than sound. His ears were suddenly rocked with the crash of deafening thunder, sending the scythe to his knees. He dropped the DVD to the ground and clutched his ears, and only the sharp timbre of Maka's frightened voice cut through the explosion of sound.

"Soul?!" Maka was standing in the threshold with eyes like huge olive saucers

Looking away from his meister and back through the window, Soul's jaw went slack. The lightning tower continued to undulate, expanding with every pulse. With one sudden burst, the green light spread across the sky, rampaging across the desert and straight towards Death City.

Soul threw himself at Maka, providing her one last shield-one last promise-before the sickly light burst into the apartment and enveloped them both. He felt his arms encircle her petite frame, blonde pigtails brushing against his collarbone, before they hit the floor and his mind went blank.

* * *

><p>Soul shot up out of bed, panting and sweating as unexplainable feelings of horror and fear swelled like the shriek of a passing siren. Even after calming down, the sensation of displacement and nauseating wrongness caused the scythe to stagger out of the hospital bed and towards a nearby mirror.<p>

Long, choppy white hair. Unfocused red eyes. Sharp teeth. Yep, Soul woke up the same girl she went to bed as.

She ignored the slight headache pounding in the back of her skull as her eyes drifted towards her exposed collarbone and the rough stitches creeping across her chest. Well, maybe not exactly the same. After the fiasco in Italy with the demon sword, Soul was actually feeling less and less like her usual, cynical self with every passing day. It wasn't just the barbed scar peeking out of her shirt; it was the scratching of a broken jazz record that echoed when she dreamed, the face of a cackling demon that appeared when she closed her eyes, the look of abject horror on her meister's face when she burst out of his abdomen like a child of the black blood.

Her dreams were getting more and more messed up every night, assuming she could even fall asleep. With a yawn, Soul ambled back to her bed and sprawled across the mattress. The one benefit of staying overnight in the Shibusen infirmary was that Soul had the opportunity to sleep in without Mako lecturing her to death. A little smile formed unbidden on her face. While it was true that her meister had a perpetual yardstick shoved up his ass, she missed that bookworm. Or, at least, she missed the way things used to be. Everytime Mako visited her in the clinic, he treated Soul like she was a girl made of glass. Didn't get too close, didn't smack her too hard, and didn't look too long at her scar. Maybe after she returned home…

With a jolt, Soul realized that she was actually slated to be released from bedrest today. How could she have forgotten? She immediately sat up to start packing up her clothes she forgot to fold, the homework she never did, and the bras she left strewn about the floor.

As she went through the mostly-mindless motions of collecting her things, an eerie tingling crept up her spine like the pricks of a thousand needles. The sensation was like a word lost on the tip of her tongue, a ghostly repetition of something she couldn't recall, a nagging sense of something that was both glaringly obvious and a shrouded enigma. The stark hairs on her arm stood erect, and the girl shivered.

Soul always joked that Mako was the one gifted with feminine intuition, but even someone as imperceptive as her couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss.

* * *

><p>On the other side of Shibusen, Soul's meister looked on as his reckless childhood friend writhed on the floor, hand enveloped inside a jar of soul-sapping water. Black Star whipped her hand out of said jar, only to thrust it back inside. The girl's muscles shrank until her limbs became limp and her enormous breasts shriveled up like raisins. It was fun to watch at first, but it peeved him that Black Star, who had only recently collected her first ever soul, got a special training regimen from Stein while Mako, Stein's top student who had already collected 100 souls, got no help or guidance from anyone.<p>

Ugh, girls, Mako thought bitterly. His professor, Dr. Frances Stein, was standing beside him, staring blankly at Black Star with her hands in her lab coat pockets. They only ever look out for each other.

The thought felt odd in Mako's head, but he paid it no heed. He actually had been fighting a headache all day, not to mention a thousand other discomforts, one of them being that, in that moment, his legs felt too hot in his plaid pants. Since when did that happen?

Tired of watching Black Star splash around with a jar of water, Mako turned to his teacher.

"Professor Stein, can I have one of those special jars too?" he asked.

Stein's eyes were obscured by the lens flare of her glasses. "I can't do that," she said in monotone. "The water in the jar is only intended to help Black Star in using Tsubasa's enchanted sword mode."

The ninja gasped for air before yanking her arm out of the ominous liquid. "I'm not going to let myself get beaten by a jar. I don't care how special it is!" Black Star was only supposed to stick one finger into the soul-sapping water at a time, but she kept submerging her arm all the way up to her elbow. Once again, the girl was reduced to a squirming skeleton as the substance drained her of all of her strength.

"I would be surprised if Black Star even realized what she was doing by saying things like that," Stein mused. "By talking constantly about what a star she is, Black Star is driving herself without even meaning to."

Mako frowned. "Driving herself?"

He listened as Stein began to explain how Black Star coped with fear and inferiority by bragging about her own greatness, but the professor's words sounded stale and half-hearted. Neither of them, Mako realized, was fully present in this conversation, or even in that room. Stein spoke with the distant detachment of a bad actor reading from a script, and Mako bobbed his head along as if he were listening, though his mind was reeling from something else. The whole exchange was recognizable, familiar even, and though Mako could easily quote Stein's dissection of Black Star before it reached his ears, he could not figure out why pins and needles spread across his back like a rash and the wisps of hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

"Right now you're definitely lacking something Mako," Stein said in a bored, hollow tone. "A certain level of stress and anxiety is understandable, but you don't want to take it too far."

Whatever creepy sensations Mako felt before immediately evaporated. "Wait," he blurted. "What do you mean lacking something?"

The corners of Stein's mouth twitched. "Once you figure out what it is, come see me and we'll decide what to do about it."

Stein informed Black Star that their special training was over and walked out of the room with a curious expression on her face. The ninja neither noticed Stein's absence nor took her advice to give the soul-sapping water a rest. Mako left her to squirm and heave on the floor while he sought out Soul.

After a few weeks confined to the Shibusen clinic, his weapon could finally come home. Waiting for her was a party attended by all of their closest friends and catered by Mako himself. The thought of it spurred him to quicken his pace down the empty hall.

He always joked that Soul was a good-for-nothing slacker, and while the latter half was definitely true, Mako had come to realize that she was good for something. Soul was his best friend, his confidante, his equal. During battle, her weapon form felt like an extension of himself, a piece of his own soul, and having her temporarily severed from his daily routine felt akin losing a limb.

Mako learned three things from the encounter with the demon sword. First, unlike Black Star, Mako couldn't beat the odds by simply saying he could. The victories he earned and the disasters he avoided-the image of Soul's blood-stained jacket flashed through his mind-were lucky flukes. Second, Stein was right when she said Mako lacked something, and it was due that lack that Italy had gone so wrong. Third, the bleak emptiness of cooking for one and falling asleep while the bedroom beside his remained empty was as deep and maddening as the black blood itself.

He knocked on the infirmary door twice, but opened it before he heard any affirmation from the other side. So soon after Italy, the meister should have learned better than to recklessly open doors. After giving a perfunctory nod to Dr. Medusa, Mako sharply inhaled at the sight of his weapon.

Soul was sitting there, staring with her blue shirt rumpled in her hands as Dr. Medusa used his stethoscope to listen to her heartbeat. Though it covered the parts of Soul's body he couldn't visualize without suffering a nosebleed, her sports bra did little to obscure the scar slicing across her chest. Mako didn't need to imagine the rest of her to connect the knitted flesh emerging from her right hip bone to the tarnished skin on her left shoulder.

For the first time, it hit Mako that this scar was never going away. Soul would carry it across her chest like a brand for the rest of her life, and for what? To save Mako's useless hide? The uncanny familiarity that overtook him earlier rushed back, coursing down his arms and heating up his face. Mako may have walked away from the demon sword without a scratch, but for Soul, the meister's ultimate screwup was permanent. He could never fix this, fix her. The mixture of guilt and recognition, shock and sorrow, made Mako feel like icicles were dripping down his back and coals were burning up his feet.

"Hey," Soul said, studying her meister. While Mako's eyes shifted from Soul's scar to her face, he couldn't shake off the dark memory of staining his white gloves, desperately holding his best friend's broken body together as she bled out on the stone cold floor.

"I'm going home to get ready for the party," Mako said quietly. "See you there." He retreated back into the hall and shut the clinic door behind him.

* * *

><p>Soul watched her meister leave, frustrated that she'd once again upset Mako without meaning to. She put her shirt back on with a heavy sigh.<p>

The doctor removed his stethoscope from his ears and began making notes in Soul's medical file. "You're right, something does seems bothering him," he said. "Is it the scar?"

Soul clutched the center of her shirt with a white hot fist. "Yeah. It happens everytime he sees it. He gets this pained look."

Medusa scribbled something in his notes. "Well, beside a slight arrhythmia you seem to be making a nice recovery so far. Let's just take your blood pressure." Soul obeyed and held out her left arm, consumed with thoughts of her meister. In the past couple weeks, she had become completely at ease around Dr. Medusa. He wasn't creepy like Stein or annoying like Deathscythe; she found that she could quite easily zone out and trust Medusa to do his thing.

"Is there something else you're concerned about?" Medusa asked with his honeyed voice as he guided Soul's arm into the pressure bandage. Thinking suddenly of the demons plaguing her dreams, Soul stopped staring at the floor to look at the doctor.

Medusa's amber eyes were warm and inviting. His smile was sincere, but every nerve in Soul's body started screaming. Don't trust him. She didn't understand the origin of this impulse-she always thought Medusa was a straight up guy-but all she could see was his unblinking gaze and pronged goatee. Enemy. Behind the false smile, Medusa stared at the scythe like a viper slithering through grass towards its feeble prey. Any admission about the terrors that haunted her sleep dried up in Soul's throat, and all security she felt in the room was instantly gone.

Still smiling, Medusa steadily inflated the blood pressure cuff until it squeezed Soul's upper arm, which began to tremble. There are two impulses humans feel when they are in danger-fight or flight. Soul Eater wasn't a defenceless mouse, and she sure as hell never fled from something as small as a snake. In that moment, Soul wanted to transform her left arm into a blade, rip apart the medical cuff straining her bicep, and sink her scythe deep into Medusa's chest until his blood ran dark and thick down her sleeve. She wanted to silence this uncanny dread, to avenge a friend she couldn't name, to quench this nagging feeling that the world was a broken record and she was trapped in the dark while it played on forever.

"No," Soul said, overcome with horror. What the hell had gotten into her all of a sudden? To Medusa, she blurted, "Everything is good with me. Um, my blood pressure?"

Medusa's expression held no hint of disappointment or malevolence. "It's normal. Are you sure there isn't something else going on? Anything you tell me is confidential. I am a doctor, after all."

She quickly wriggled her arm free of the medical cuff. "Yeah I'm sure. Thanks for treating me and stuff." Soul headed out the door, and Medusa said that he expected her back next week for a check up. As she shuffled down the hall, refusing to look back at the doctor, Soul was already planning to skipping that appointment and every one after.

When she was several floors away from the clinic, the scythe leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. Her left arm was still shaking, itching to transform. For the first time, Soul seriously wondered if the scar wasn't the only thing wrong with her.


	2. Chapter 2

Soul shuffled home with leaden feet, body moving on autopilot while her mind focused on the eerie prickling along her spine.

It kept happening. It didn't matter whether she saw a street sign, heard a familiar voice, or glimpsed her own reflection. Everything seemed new and nauseating, and it frustrated her that she couldn't figure out _why_. Even the sensation of hair tickling her lower back felt foreign; she couldn't remember a time when her white locks didn't reach past her shoulder blades, but she kept feeling genuinely surprised by her long tresses. She wondered if she was dehydrated, her period had came early, or she was just going insane. The problem was that those theories didn't ultimately explain why she felt the way she did, or why it all started so suddenly.

Since leaving Shibusen, Soul kept a firm grip on her left wrist, holding it down as if restraining a cobra. It wasn't unusual for her to feel a little cranky when she was riding the red wave, but it sure as hell wasn't normal to feel overcome with the urge to _murder_, least of all someone as nice and unthreatening as Dr. Medusa. She at least learned that much in sex ed. Did dehydration cause people to become inexplicably violent? In all likelihood, probably not.

Her feet stopped moving forward and she swayed in the street. Death City was sweltering. The air itself shimmered in Soul's vision. She wanted to lay down on the baking pavement, to simmer, to burn quietly until the laughing sun purged whatever poison was boiling beneath her skin.

In the case of Soul's mystery illness, dehydration was beginning to look like the prime suspect. She quickly maneuvered into the nearest cafe and bought the coldest drink on the menu. The searing darkness dominating her thoughts did not cool. Soul spent an hour at there, sipping her drink and thinking about stupid things in order to get her mind off her nightmares, Medusa, and whatever sickness she was coming down with. But her mind always dwelled on her darkest thoughts, no matter what she did.

With an exhausted slouch and dragging feet, the scythe eventually found her way to her apartment building, mind consumed by thoughts of murderous nightmares and demonic doctors. Absentmindedly twirling her keys around her finger, Soul unlocked and opened the apartment door. She stopped short when she saw five people lounging in her living room, excitedly staring at her, and felt the prickling begin anew.

Crap. She had forgotten all about this party. Admittedly, Soul had forgotten about a lot of things lately, but this should have been something she remembered. She stood in the doorway, feeling a little light-headed as she looked at faces she vaguely recognized.

Black Star was sitting next to her tall weapon Tsubasa on the red couch, looking like a bona fide rainbow with her tight red tank top, green shorts, and electric blue hair tied back in a messy ponytail. She burst from her seat to greet Soul at the door.

"What up, bitch," Black Star said with a grin. Her face seemed rounder, softer than normal. Without further ado, the ninja's wiry arms wrapped around Soul's petite frame, and Black Star lifted her friend off the ground in a suffocating hug. Soul choked out her own greeting as her legs dangled above the ground and her body was pressed into Black Star's enormous yet incredibly firm breasts. Black Star was maybe four inches shorter than Soul - not counting the extra height of her spiky hair of course- but she was sturdy enough to lift a person four or five times her size. A powerhouse in a small package. She bounced Soul around in her arms as if the scythe weighed nothing.

"Easy Black Star!" Soul heard Tsubasa say. The older weapon gently pried Soul out of Black Star's iron arms, taking special care to avoid making physical contact with his meister's considerable bust. Soul couldn't help but stare at Tsubasa's broad, angular face. "Try not to pop your stitches your first night home, okay?" Tsubasa said to Soul with a helpful smile. Soul noticed that the fringe of Tsubasa's long black hair framed his face differently than usual. Maybe he got a haircut while she was sleeping off her chest injury in the clinic.

Though she was a little winded from Black Star's ribcage-crushing hug, Soul was determined to appear as cool and recuperated as possible. "Hey Star," Soul said with a jerk of her chin. "Tsu. Sorry you had to start the party without me."

"HA! It's not just your party," Black Star said with her hands on her hips. "Tsu and I bagged our first soul. That's right," Black Star leapt onto the coffee table and thrust a triumphant fist towards the ceiling. "The great and beautiful Black Star is on her way to creating her own deathscythe. Better start building a shrine, 'cause I'm only 98 souls away from becoming your new religion."

"99 souls," Soul corrected. "The last one is a real bitch, trust me."

Black Star responded with a haughty laugh. "Whatever. Check out my new disciples. You remember Kid, right?"

Of course Soul remembered Death the Kid. The grim reaper beat the snot out of them both in front of everyone without breaking a nail, only to collapse after Soul accidentally trimmed a few hairs off her perfectly coiffed head. Faulty memory aside, that was the type of experience you didn't forget. The grim reaper now sat in a living room chair, hands neatly folded on her knees, her legs crossed at the ankles. She looked a little different too, but Soul chalked that up to her outfit. Kid wasn't wearing the matching black jacket and skirt that she wore during their fight, this time opting for a loose dress and a precisely buttoned cardigan; the look of a girl who dressed casual business casual at all times. Her silky black hair was a few inches shorter than Soul's own, and it looked so much neater as it fell like inky tendrils on her shoulders.

Flanked on either side of Kid were the Thompson brothers: the demon pistols. The shaggy-haired Patrick waved enthusiastically while the older Eli gave Soul a languid salute. Soul supposed that the trio's presence at her welcome back party meant they were part of the group now. Just like that, Soul's small circle of friends doubled had overnight, but the warmth and admiration growing in Soul's chest made her feel like she had known them all her life.

"I'm glad you made a swift recovery," Kid said. "Despite your excessive tardiness."

Soul sheepishly ruffled her hair. "Yeah, sorry about that. Good to see you guys. Anyway, where the hell is-"

Speak of the devil and he will appear. Mako strode into the room in a frilly apron and paisley oven mitts, carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres. The meister's lanky arms and deceivingly scrawny frame (that boy had muscles hidden beneath the sweater vest) were even dorkier than usual in his cook get-up. Mako's nose wrinkled at the sight of his tardy weapon.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to show up to your own party," Mako said grumpily as he placed the tray on the coffee table.

Soul rolled her eyes. "I took a walk," she said with a noncommittal shrug. Her red eyes honed in on Mako's green, and a wry smile tugged at her lips. "Some of us like to leave the house instead of reading books all day."

Black Star threw her head backwards and laughed while a flash of red engulfed Mako's cheeks. "There is _nothing wrong _with reading books all day!" he sputtered. With a resigned sigh, Mako grabbed a plateful of food and held it out to his weapon. "Just shut up and eat." His green eyes softened when they met her defiant gaze. "I missed having you around."

The admission that her meister-the guy who so often ranted about her inability to do homework or get anywhere on time-actually _missed_ her caused a strange warmth and affection to pool in Soul's chest. The feeling grew more intense as Mako handed the plate to his weapon, their hands brushing for the minutest moment.

The pleasant stirrings in her chest vanished after she sat down. A flicker of recognition darted through Soul's mind as she stared at the spinach puffs and rice cakes on her plate. "Isn't this what you made last time?" she asked.

She looked up and saw that Mako hadn't touched his food, and was staring blankly ahead with knitted eyebrows and a firm frown. "I think so," he mumbled. Mako scratched the back of his head and mussed his blonde hair. "I don't remember when it was, though. It was a while ago, wasn't it?" His question hung in the air as Soul struggled to grasp the memory, only to have it slip through her fingers like a silk scarf. She was dangling on the edge of a thought, the fringe of a memory, but she couldn't voice anything tangible. There was only emptiness.

Black Star slowed her chewing, casting a suspicious glare at Soul and Mako. "What party?" The ninja hastily swallowed. "You guys been partying without me, your goddess?"

"Oh no, we were there," Tsu said. "It was when, umm..." The shadow weapon trailed off, his indigo eyes looking more and more confused.

The entire party sat in silence, eating food that they recognized with their mouths but not their minds. It struck Soul that she wasn't the only one feeling odd lately. Everyone save for Black Star had wide-eyed, lost expressions, like they were dropped into a middle of game and never heard the rules. Kid, always collected and poised, scrunched up her face as if she smelt something rancid, her shoulders and wrists tense like an alert predator.

"Kid, you ok?" Eli asked his meister. "You're more pale than normal."

Eli's meister relaxed her lean frame, but she did not loosen her expression of disgust. "I am perfectly well. Patrick, please chew with your mouth closed." Her younger weapon, caught with his mouth wide open, began to chew the rest of his rice cake slowly and deliberately.

The friends filled the pit of awkwardness and confusion they suddenly found themselves in with small talk, catching Soul up on the incident with Tsubaki's older sister, the latest dissection in Stein's class, and the juicy morsels of Shibusen gossip a certain talkative ninja had saved for this occasion. The meal itself was short due to Black Star and Pat inhaling most everything on the table.

Black Star rubbed her bloated belly with satisfaction. "Well, it didn't taste any good, but I sure am full!" she said.

Mako seethed as he gathered dirty dishes. "Maybe next time you can do all the cooking."

Kid had made a full recovery. The grim reaper neatly stacked her cutlery on her plate before handing it to Mako. "I like your apartment," she said. "You keep it very nice and clean."

The meister smiled, seemingly touched by the compliment, but Soul couldn't restrain her irreverent laughter. "Pfft. It's only clean because Mako yells at me everytime I make a mess," Soul said, picking her sharp teeth with her fingernail.

Soul heard a husky laugh at the back of the room, and she shifted in her seat to see who it was. Blair, part-time stripper and full-time menace, was observing the group of teenagers while wearing nothing but a fluffy white towel around his hips. The sound of his low, guttural purr and the sight of his exposed, rippling physique silenced all conversation.

"Hey kitkats," Blair said. He smiled slyly, tail curled, and his purple ears flicked toward the group. "Have you guys checked out my brand new look yet?"

The cat put his hands behind his head, allowing his towel to drop from his hips and onto the ground. The room's reaction was immediate-Soul melted in her chair, Kid froze in shock, Tsubasa averted his gaze, Black Star's eyes bulged out of her skull, and Pat stared at Blair's naked form, deeply intrigued, until Eli hastily covered his younger brother's eyes.

While the others grappled with a mixture of embarrassment and excitement, Mako snatched the towel off the floor and thrust it into Blair's chest, all the while maintaining violent eye contact with the mischievous cat. "Since when is _naked_ a new look for you?"

Mostly recovered from the shock of Blair's slamming naked body, Soul sat back up. She saw Blair's ears flick backward as he gave his Mako a sheepish pout. "But I thought that was why everyone came over, to show off."

"Show off _what?_"

Blair's ears perked up, suddenly erect with interest. His yellow eyes glided over the students, drinking in the sight of their confused, shocked faces. The cat's mouth formed a silent 'Oh' before a cheshire grin spread wide across his face, revealing his sharp canines.

"I know something you don't know." Blair suppressed a small chuckle. "Something important."

"Yeah, right!" Mako said. The meister took Blair by the elbow and dragged him out of the living room.

While Mako wrangled Blair into another room, Kid turned to Soul. "Is it always like this?"

Soul put her hand to her nose. Her index finger came away wet with blood. Looking at the evidence of her bloody nose, Soul nodded. "If anyone wants to take the sexy kitty home, he's free."

* * *

><p>The sun struggled to keep its eyes open as it slowly sank in the sky. The apartment, which relied on natural light during the day, was awash with darkening orange light and growing shadows. The friends had been there for hours, chatting and eating, pausing when a strange feeling of displaced familiarity crept up their backs, and then continuing their conversation as if nothing was wrong. If they couldn't find the words to describe what was so weird, that meant nothing bad was going on, right?<p>

Mako was not so sure. All day he had experienced multiple waves of the willies, each stirring in the back of his head and down his neck as suddenly as the last, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that he wasn't the only one. Soul looked troubled ever since she arrived at the party, and as the evening wore on, the others seemed to grow more restless. More than once Mako feared Kid was going to throw up all over her weapons, _his_ weapon, and the couch. The business with that perverted feline Blair gave the group a small reprieve from whatever weirdness was but-

A jolt of electricity ran up Mako's spine, putting him on high alert. He jumped up from his seat, causing Soul's head to jerk back in surprise. "Witch!" Mako said, pounding one fist into his palm. "Sorry guys, I got to go!" Without thinking, Mako left his gaping friends in the living room and ran out of the apartment. As he went out the door, he heard his weapon's confused voice call after him.

There was no time to lose; something was amiss. He was a whirlwind as he rushed down the stairs of his apartment building and sprinted into the street. Mako did not think about where he was going or why, just that a witch's soul was shining like a beacon in the edges of his perception, its light flooding his senses as he drew closer and closer.

He skidded to a halt in a rundown alley, whirling around to find the source of that feeling.

The alley was empty.

The taste of iron was on his tongue and throbs of pain in his side, and he wondered in his exhaustion if he had gone nuts. His nerves didn't fire at full blast for no reason, and his budding powers of perception never sent him on a wild goose chase, not like that.

Mako's soul perception twinged as someone else approached the alley, a soul he recognized very well. Professor Stein rounded the corner, her patched lab coat billowing behind her, casually holding a cigarette to her lips as if she was on a smoke break. Despite her steady gait and calm demeanor, Mako noticed Stein's eyes flick around the alley. It was empty save for the two meisters. She must have felt the same thing.

It was all too easy for Mako to slide into the role of student when in the presence of a teacher, even outside the classroom. "I don't get it," Mako said. He waited for Stein to supply an answer, and when she didn't, he elaborated. "There was a witch here. I sensed its presence and came running-"

"There is nothing here," Stein said. She took a drag from her cigarette, eyebrows furrowed. "You didn't sense anything. I didn't either, yet here I am. Isn't it curious that we both would wind up in the same alley for no reason?"

Mako hated being wrong, even about a rhetorical question. "But I did have a reason! I just said I sensed-"

"You sensed nothing." Stein said in a hollow tone. "What drew you here was the absence of sensation. We were both compelled to face the threat we expected to sense, but when we sensed nothing we came to face it anyway."

A piece of litter rustled in the wind as Mako tried to put together his thoughts. He wasn't following a beacon-it was a black hole, an enormous pit of nothing, that startled him so much.

"I suspect Soul will be joining us soon," Stein said. While he hadn't extended his soul perception to find his weapon, Mako too ventured a guess that Soul was on her way to the alley.

"Mako, hey!" Sure enough, Soul came bounding in the alley.

As the scythe stood there, panting from exertion and staring at him, baffled, Mako reached out towards her. Her scar, he could almost see it burning beneath her shirt, searing her once flawless skin. Mako felt prickling on the back of his neck, the same he had felt all day, but he paid it no heed. He wanted to pour all of the guilt and affection in his heart through the palm of his hand and soothe her hurt, willies be damned.

Mako lightly placed his hand above her heart, and his neck went slack. He slung his head low and closed his eyes, willing for the wound beneath the blue fabric of Soul's shirt to heal anew. But no matter how much he wanted to erase that horrid, jagged line from his memory and Soul's torso, it was there to stay. No amount of wishing could change that.

Soul stiffened at his touch but for a moment before her shoulders relaxed. "You have to tell me what's going on," she said with wide eyes.

For the first time since Italy, it all became clear. Mako couldn't heal or protect Soul through will alone. He had to become stronger, smarter. He would take the blow from the demonsword twice over if it meant saving her from that trauma, but first he had to stop feeling so afraid. He had to stare death in the face without flinching if he ever was going to move forward.

Pupils dilating with determination, Mako lifted his head. "Professor Stein, I know what I'm lacking now," he said. His hand reluctantly shifted away from his weapon.

Stein nodded quietly, considering Mako's words. "We should report to the Death Room immediately," she said with a steady voice. "I think Lady Death will be interested in hearing what you just experienced."


	3. Chapter 3

Lady Death struck a fragile figure against the bright blue skies of the Death Room. Her veil, normally fluttering in front of her expressionless skull mask, hung limp and frayed. She leaned to the left, stiff as a scarecrow, while Mako, his friends, and Professor Stein filed in. The silence was an omen; this wasn't the goofy headmistress they knew. The grim reaper shuddered and sighed, hugging herself with spindly arms, almost as if to prevent her shadowy form from disintegrating.

Stein scratched her neck, bored. "So the entire class has arrived," she murmured. "Well, I suppose you all will serve as a decent sample for my next experiment." Mako shivered; If Stein was talking about experiments, things had to be bad.

"Is everyone here familiar with the concept of deja vu?" Stein asked. One by one, the students answered in the affirmative. It was laughable to Mako that his professor was even asking a question like that. Deja vu was a faux phenomenon, a complete myth, but it was one everyone knew about, so really what was the point-

"No," Black Star piped up. Mako craned his head to the side to see the ninja staring at her feet. Tsubasa, noticing his meister's sudden shyness, elbowed Black Star and spoke up.

"Oh, I don't know what deja vu is, Professor Stein! Sorry, could you explain it?" Tsubasa said, hand raised as if in class. "Thanks Star, for speaking up for me," he added with a wink. They pulled this stunt often in class. Black Star, ever determined to become the epitome of godliness, refused on principle to draw attention to any gaps in her knowledge. It was her weapon who asked all the questions, even if Tsubasa already understood the lesson.

Stein released a dry, unamused sigh. "Very well. Deja vu refers to the feeling of having already experienced your present situation. In other words, if something feels familiar even though you _know _it has never happened to you, you are experiencing deja vu. Is that clear, _Nakatsukasa?_"

Tsubasa nodded vigorously, his low ponytail bouncing with every nod of his head. Stein rolled her eyes. "Now that I've spelled it out, raise your hand if you have experienced deja vu in the past twenty-four hours."

Mako's hand shot up immediately, shortly followed by the others. Only Black Star twiddled her thumbs, glancing at her friends in confusion.

"I expected as much." Stein muttered. "I first began to experience it yesterday afternoon, but it wasn't until Mako and I experienced deja vu at the same time that I realized it was a widespread phenomenon."

"My hypothesis is that spacetime has bent in such a way that our time stream and a separate, alternate timestream are overlapping. As a result, our real-time actions and the memories of our alternate selves are combined, causing us to relive moments we have already experienced. This melding of timestreams, if you will, is distorting the fabric of spacetime, which-"

"Hey Stein!" Black Star said loudly, interrupting the professor. "Hold up, Tsu is having trouble following along again."

Tsubasa, who had had actually been taking diligent notes in a small notepad, quickly dropped the pad and pen at the mention of his name. "Yeah, I'm really lost!" He said disingenuously. "Thanks again Black Star!"

Stein exhaled sharply through her nose and adopted a droll tone. "Someone tried to turn back time, but they made a mistake. Now we are experiencing deja vu as a prelude to a dimensional apocalypse. Questions, comments, concerns?"

Seven hands shot up in the air.

The professor pressed her lips into a fine line. "I need to add the theory of relativity to my curriculum."

"OH HO HO!" Lady Death wheezed to life, lurching towards her students. She wagged a thick finger at Stein. "None of that! We only teach _fun _here at the academy." Mako balked. His headmistress may be the personification of death, but she was usually teeming with energy and life. It was uncanny to see her so brittle.

Death coughed daintily in her hand. "Someone with enormously powerful spatial magic is behind this, but they probably did not know what they were doing. You see, there is something else amiss with the world." She threw her poofy gloves into the air. "We just don't know what it is!"

A dark, husky voice growled behind Lady Death's mask. "This world _reeks_ of temporal interference." The friendly, goofy facade Lady Death wore in the presence of her students cracked as her voice became more haggard, her enthusiasm gone. "It's taking everything I have to keep this world from collapsing."

Kid was at her mother's side, supporting the elderly reaper as she swayed from side to side. The Thompson brothers followed suit. Mako could do nothing but stare at the fragile being their deity had become.

Stein clicked her tongue. "Lady Death is right. There is something else wrong with our world. It is possible for Lady Death to restore the universe to its prior state, but only if we identify that single variable. I need to use you seven to collect data. Tomorrow each of you will meet me one-on-one to discuss your experiences with deja vu. Once I deduce a pattern and isolate the variable, we'll return everything to normal."

Sometimes teachers dropped pop quizzes like firebombs, leaving their students confused and shell-shocked as they left the classroom. Sometimes, they exposed a harsh truth, like that people were capable of unfathomable evil, or the world wasn't as black and white as you thought it was. And other times, they told you that the universe as on the verge of collapse and your thoughts and feelings were somehow crucial to its survival. In all of these instances, there was little anyone could do but to gape silently and hope for the best.

Before leaving, Mako made sure to catch Stein on her way out.

"Professor Stein?" Mako asked. "I meant to ask-you said if I figured out what I was lacking you would help me train. I was hoping we'd get started as soon as possible."

Stein sighed and removed her wireframe glasses, rifling through her lab coat pockets. She fished out a rag, torn and stained with rusty brown splotches, and began to methodically wipe the lens, all the while her pale eyes never leaving Mako's own. "I'm afraid I'll have to postpone your training until after this deja vu situation is settled. For now, the best thing you can do is to keep your senses open. Use that head of yours, take note of what's going on around you."

She turned to leave, but Mako, unwilling to let Stein give him the brush off, grabbed a hold of the professor's lab coat. "But I thought I had to get stronger!"

Stein replaced her glasses on the bridge of her nose and shot the meister a look of exasperation. "Until my priorities change, you're on your own." The lab coat, wrinkled by Mako's urgent grip, drifted back to the ground.

Stein was disgusting, menacing, and obsessive, but she was also sort of a role model to Mako. She was an amazingly skilled meister, and he respected her for it. Admired her for it. It stung to be shoved away by the closest thing he had to a mentor. How was he supposed to strengthen his skills if he didn't know what to do?

In their haste to make it to the Death Room, the pair had traveled to Shibusen on Soul's garish orange motorcycle. After the meeting was finally over, the pair found the motorcycle parked at the bottom of the Shibusen front steps, a single helmet swinging from the handlebars. Soul said cool chicks didn't wear helmets, so Mako sometimes stubbornly wore the helmet for her, for all the good that would do. There was no use hurling a well-deserved 'I told ya so' at someone with a head injury. He removed the helmet from where it hung on the handlebars and ran his hand over its hard shell. Soul had only just come back from the hospital, and he didn't want to risk losing her again, not so soon.

"You should wear the helmet on the way back," Mako suggested nonchalantly. He caught Soul rolling her eyes. "Come on, I wouldn't nag if I didn't think it was important."

Soul was already revving the bike, ready to go. "Nah, you wear it. You're the one with the brains, not me. I can take a concussion or two." The weapon revved the bike once more with increasing impatience, and Mako placed his helmet on his head and clipped it into place.

It pissed him off how Soul always casually wrote off her intelligence. When she rolled her crimson eyes or waved her hand at her nagging meister, she was really dismissing herself. Didn't she realize that everything in that head of hers was worth protecting? Being smart was a skill, a form of strength, but having more or less of a skill didn't define anyone.

If anyone was held back by relying on one skill, it was him. Mako didn't remember a time when teachers didn't applaud his high verbal intelligence and aptitude, but all that praise made him negligent and lazy. Where was that intelligence when Soul needed him? Trapped by a silent scream lodged in the back of Mako's throat.

In the realm of meisters, demonswords, and kishin-eggs, physical strength beat smarts every time. His lascivious mom's IQ certainly had nothing to do with her ascension to the rank of Deathscythe. Professor Stein, too, had risen through the DWMA ranks through more than just intelligence.

"_Use that head of yours, take note of what's going on around you."_

A flash of inspiration crossed Mako's mind. The universe was collapsing on itself, and no one, not even the genius meister Professor Stein, knew why. For once Mako didn't have to rely on stronger fighters to charge into battle with guns blazing. This challenge had to be solved with brains, not brawn, and if Mako possessed anything in his arsenal of skills, it was his logical, detail-oriented brain.

After Soul parked her bike, Mako climbed the stairs to his apartment with new vigor. He still needed to become stronger, but he wasn't totally useless. And he was going to prove it.

Mako Albarn was going to solve this mystery first.

* * *

><p>The scythe jolted out of bed, fear and anger coursing through her limbs and down her spine like lightning. Soul was safe in her bed, in her room, but her heart thumped as if she had woken in the middle of a battlefield. Demonic cackling echoed in her ears and, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of her room, she swore she saw phantom faces darting through the shadows. Alarmed, Soul thrashed in her bed and transformed her entire left arm into a scythe blade, ready to strike and defend.<p>

She was alone.

Metal transformed back to bone and sinew. Sweat glued long white hairs to the back of Soul's neck and behind her ears. The trappings of home were supposed to be a bastion of safety, but even in the warm covers of her bed, Soul could not escape the hell inside her head.

She threw off her blankets and stumbled out of her room. The apartment was immersed in shadow. Soul tiptoed around furniture, taking special care not to wake any of her roommates. Blair lay asleep in his kitty basket, purring softly with twitching paws. Mako was presumably sleeping. It crossed Soul's mind to seek solace in her meister's room, but it wouldn't do to wake him up, not for something as uncool as a recurring nightmare. As a piercing headache throbbed in Soul's head, the weapon took sluggish steps towards the bathroom.

Soul clutched at the bathroom wall, searching for the light switch, and her drowsy vision fell in and out of focus. The sudden sight of an apparition with mad eyes and savage teeth made Soul jump out of her skin, instantly snapping her out of her lethargy.

The light flickered on. The only face Soul saw was her own, reflected in the bathroom mirror, eyes wide and cloudy with terror.

She switched the light back off. Now that she had chased the ghosts away, she wanted to wallow in calm darkness.

Unlike her sister, Soul was never interested in being easy on the eyes. She wanted people to flinch - to think twice before reaching out to wound. Her body was not only Mako's weapon, but also her armor. She used her gnashing teeth to keep anyone from coming too close, and her deep red eyes carried one message: don't look, and sure as hell don't fucking touch.

But this was the first time Soul was scared by her own reflection, the first time her monstrous armor backfired upon its master. She made bloodshot eye contact with her mirror image. The demon inside, it was coming out.

Still staring at her dark reflection, Soul crossed her arms in front of her torso and fingered the hem of her ratty t-shirt. An unnatural prickling gathered in her fingertips, causing Soul to stop short. Instead, she lifted her arms over her head, reaching backwards until she held the back of her shirt in her fists. She peeled it off as if shedding a second skin, not minding as her hair caught in the neckline. Soul tossed the shirt aside and looked deep into the bathroom mirror.

When Soul first woke up after her surgery, Stein used the phrase 'minor disfigurement' to describe the damage. But when she first laid eyes on the scar, still red and raw from Stein's clumsy stitching, Soul realized there was nothing minor about it. After a single split second decision, a livid scar corkscrewed across her torso had become her defining feature. On a dude it might look badass, but on Soul? She looked like damaged goods.

Soul slung her right arm across her bare chest. She could easily imagine her family's shocked, pity-ridden faces when they discovered what had become of their youngest daughter.

What was it all of Soul's old fairytale books said? That a person's outside reflected their inside? That the goodness in people shone out like sunbeams and the poison in dark hearts corrupted fine faces? Whether it's an ugly duckling becoming a graceful swan, a beautiful girl transforming into an evil crone, or an asshole demonweapon succumbing to madness, looks deceive for only so long. Black blood will out.

Soul had always physically looked like the devil to her sister's angel, the Cain to Wesleigh's Abel. While Wes created beautiful, dreamy symphonies with her violin, Soul wove chilling, depraved nightmares with her piano. One more grotesque scar wasn't going to make her any more freakish than she was already. The demon in her dream though, that face that awoke when she closed her eyes, added a whole new level of messed up to her psychosis. Her madness was more than skin deep, and it was threatening to boil over.

Good girls don't dream of demons.

When did she get so twisted?

The memory of Mako in the alley, placing his hand upon her heart, came to Soul unbidden. When he reached towards her, towards her scar, his hand did not hesitate and his touch did not bruise.

When they first met, Soul insisted that Mako listen to her play the piano before becoming partners, hoping this last ditch effort would stop him from getting too close. Instead of running away, he gave her a round of applause. That was when Soul knew her armor was paper-thin to the truly fearless.

It was only the shape of the soul that mattered-that was something Soul decided long ago. She wasn't going to let some creepy nightmares or a crude scar get to her. She might not ever say it aloud, but Mako was worth it. Hell, she would fight until her body was covered with swollen scabs and angry wounds before allowing anyone to harm one hair on that nerd's head.

As long as Mako was there to drive away the darkness hiding in the depths of her bones, Soul would be there to protect him from the evil lurking outside.

* * *

><p>On the other side of the apartment, Mako sat at his desk, too overstimulated to sleep.<p>

A notebook lay open in front of him, its pages covered in excited, energetic scrawl. When he first sat down, Mako became manic and brainstormed possible dimension alterations for three pages straight, his handwriting steadily devolving from cursive to chicken scratch. After all of his deranged scribbling, all Mako had to show for his efforts was a sore wrist and pages of garbled nonsense.

He slumped forward and laid his cheek on his desk. Defeated, his earlier thoughts of inadequacy stirred. Mako bet if _Black Star _tried, she would just stumble upon the answer. Things worked out that way for her; if she wasn't so damn determined to accomplish something, she would accomplish it anyway through dumb luck. Kid, too, would have solved this puzzle hours ago. While the scythemeister spent hours studying for all of his classes, Kid coasted through school without even cracking open one book. She was a natural at everything.

Mako didn't have a tenacious soul. He gave up on things that were hopeless, such as confronting Stein at his laboratory, fighting the demonsword in Italy, and forgiving his parents for destroying their family. It was a fatal flaw he desperately wanted to overcome, no, to _erase _from his personality. When the time came and hope was lost, no one, not even Soul, would be there to help Mako out of the clotted pit. He had to learn how to crawl out himself.

With one swooping movement, Mako brushed aside his prior work and started anew. This time, he was going to think more clearly, clinically. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his fingers, and smiled as his joints cracked into place.

Mako made a list. He liked lists because they were succinct and organized. The deja vu stuff started the day of Soul's return, the party, and incident in the alley. If he listed everything that happened and all the times he experienced something akin to deja vu, Mako could deduce the altered variable.

His final list deja vu moments only had five bullet points.

_Spoke to Stein about getting stronger. _

_Saw Soul in hospital. _

_Went home and picked up. Cleaned Soul's room for her._

_Cooked for party. Soul shows up late. Ate food. _

_Felt presence. Met Stein and Soul in alley._

The clock ticked closer to 1 a.m. Mako rubbed his eyes and yawned. Now that he had some loose data, it was time to find the pattern.

Maybe it was the party that had changed? Three out of five of his top deja vu moments had to do with the event. Looking back, all the awkward silences between his friends made complete sense. He kicked himself for not connecting the dots earlier. Even so, the party seemed too mundane to be at the heart of this time travel stuff. There had to be something else, something that all of his data had in common.

His breath hitched. The answer was staring him in the face.

Fingers numb and mind reeling, Mako circled every instance of Soul's name in his list, pen pressing almost hard enough to pierce the paper. She showed up four out of five times. Coincidence? It was hard to tell, considering how much of this was based solely upon vague emotions and distant discomforts. Yet it wasn't the quantity of deja vu sensations he had to look into, but the _quality_.

He thought of the sight of Soul's scar, the suffocating guilt it inspired, the bittersweet joy when Soul returned home less whole than when she left. Mako remembered the unexplainable sadness during the party, the sensations of misplacing cherished memories he didn't even know he had lost. Staring at the only entry without Soul's name-_Spoke to Stein about getting stronger-_he was flooded with the same insecurity he felt under Stein's steady gaze as she informed her student that he was lacking something, something that prevented him from helping his weapon in her most dire moment. Worse, Mako remembered what the professor never said but always implied: that Soul was damn lucky to have survived that injury, and even luckier to recover so quickly.

What were the chances of a weapon living through that trauma?

What were the chances of a weapon living through that trauma _twice?_ Not high. Not high at all.

No one started experiencing deja vu until the day Soul left the hospital, fully recovered from the attack by the demonsword. Coincidence?

Maka absentmindedly circled Soul's name, over and over, digging a deeper trench in his notebook with every revolution. What if, in some horrible alternate universe, Soul _didn't _survive Italy? What if she bled out in his arms? What if they did bring her home alive, only to have her flatline on Stein's gruesome operating table? What if the hasty stitching across her chest got infected, causing Soul's life to blink out of existence overnight, despite their greatest efforts?

And what if that universe in which the light in Soul's eyes was snuffed out _wasn't _an alternate reality? What if-Mako swallowed and his hands began to tremble-what if that was the true reality? The _real _reality? His head swam with possibilities, each confirming Mako's dangerous, forbidden conclusion that Soul's chances of survival were statistically miniscule.

With a single leap of logic, Mako cracked the code and deduced what was wrong with the world.

Soul lived.

Mako did not often swear, yet a string of curses flew unrestrained from his lips. He ripped out all the pages from his notebook, and shoved them into his waste basket. Paper was supposed to be easy to stuff away, but like a simmering secret, the leaflets spilled over the top. He used his fists to pound them down, forcing them into the trash where these horrible conclusions and thoughts belonged.

He ceased hitting his trash can when he heard Soul's concerned voice beyond the door. "Mako? You okay in there?"

He froze. Mako must have cursed loud enough for Soul to hear him in the next room. How could that happen? That girl slept like the dead. Mako physically recoiled backwards from his own thought. He heaved himself off the ground and staggered to the door. After a moment's hesitation, he opened it just wide enough to see his weapon.

"Hey! Whatcha doing up so late?" Mako asked, smile plastered to his face.

Soul must have just rolled out of bed. Her hair was a disaster, sticking out in every direction, and soft gray bags hung beneath her eyes. She scratched her side and pursed her lips. "It's one in the morning and you're cussing your head off. What do you think?"

Mako forced a laugh. "Oh! You heard that? Sorry, I promise not to do it again!" He moved to close the door when Soul held it open with a calloused hand.

"What were you so upset about anyways?" she asked.

Mako opened his mouth to answer but said nothing. Telling Soul what he had discovered wasn't an option, but lying to her wasn't a great alternative either. Seconds ticked by, and Mako became increasingly aware that this awkward pause was only growing longer and longer. His mind was blank, so he blurted out the first thought he had.

"I was just looking at my calendar."

Soul raised a thin eyebrow, suspicious. "Your calendar?"

Now that the lie had been chosen, Mako grew bold. "Yeah. Did you know the Super Written Exam is only five weeks away? There's almost no time left to prepare."

An amused light ignited Soul's drained, haunted eyes. She smirked, and Mako's heart flew out of him.

That was all it took; One look, one smile, one expression that was so characteristically _Soul. _He doubted anyone else on the planet could smile like that. There wasn't a single ounce of that girl he didn't like. From her bedhead to her gruff, caustic smirk, there was not one fiber of her being that he didn't want to protect with his heart and soul.

"Why are you smiling at me like that?" Soul asked.

His face heated up. "What? I was smiling?"

Soul twisted her lips into another smirk. "Just go the hell to bed, bookworm."

Mako nodded and closed his door. He waited until he heard Soul shut her own door before collapsing to his knees and leaning against their shared wall. All day he had been obsessing over how to improve his own skills, how to satisfy his own pride by coming a better meister than his friends or his professor. Now that he really had bested Stein in his own way, Mako didn't feel any pride-just bleak, icy dread.

Stein said her mission was to correct whatever variable had been altered- that way, the universe could go back to normal. The problem was that 'normal' meant killing Soul all over again. How would such a correction even be _performed?_ He pictured Lady Death making Soul vanish into thin air with a snap of her large fingers, or raising his mother in scythe form to erase Soul Eater Evans from this universe once and for all.

His weakness almost caused Soul to lose her life once. He wouldn't allow Soul to die a second time, no matter how crippling his fear.


	4. Chapter 4

Elijah Thompson shifted uncomfortably in Stein's office, leaning back as far as his plastic chair could allow to get farther away from the professor's menacing grun. His sneakers, firmly planted on the tiled floor, anchored him as he looked around the room. More than a year had passed since becoming partners with Kid, and Eli was no longer used to pure, unadulterated masses of clutter. While Stein was a genius scientist, cleanliness wasn't one of her virtues. Books were stacked sideways on almost every surface, and scraps of paper poked out of the pages of each one. Jars of shriveled ears, pale organs, and human molars adorned the top shelf of every bookcase.

The desk, too, was covered in piles of paperwork. Eli noted with mounting anxiety that a rusty scalpel lay within arms reach of the professor.

Stein flashed a slight smile at her student, her eyes lingering on his chin. "So, how have you been feeling lately, Eli?" Years of chain smoking gave the professor's voice a husky edge, which might have sounded attractive if she didn't speak in a creepy monotone.

Eli tapped his hands on his jeans. "Well, uh, you know. Pretty normal until this Twilight Zone stuff started happening."

The professor responded with a low chuckle. "Twilight Zone stuff. Very aptly put. I want you to walk me through your daily routine and describe anything abnormal."

Eli frowned. What did his daily routine have to do with the universe collapsing? "I get up, get clean, get dressed, and get out." This was a condensed version of the weapon's elaborate morning ritual, which sometimes extended for more than an hour. Once he no longer had to worry about where Pat's next meal was coming from on the daily, he began to take some pride in looking well-groomed.

"I assume you shave during the 'get clean' portion of your day." Stein's eyes were obscured by the glare of her glasses.

"Yup," Eli answered, popping the 'p.' "Shaved every other day since I was fourteen."

Stein lurched forward in her seat. "But you've cut yourself." Eli resisted the urge to mess with the bandage he slapped on his chin only a few hours before. "It's a pretty big cut too. Is it not unusual for someone who shaves as frequently as yourself to suddenly get so sloppy?"

Unusual didn't describe the half of it.

Ever since moving into Gallows Manor, Eli and Pat were banished to their own specific bathroom where Kid didn't have to witness their mess everyday. Even so, every drawer and surface was kept impeccably organized by some phantom maid Eli could only assume was his obsessive meister. Living in a no-crumbs-allowed environment was tough sometimes, but one of the perks was that everything had a place. The logic of why cleaning supplies went in one drawer and soaps when in another was a mystery to Eli, but as long as the pattern never changed, he could navigate his way through the entire estate without even opening his eyes.

That morning, a shirtless Eli had shuffled half-asleep to the bathroom, using only muscle memory as his guide. With lidded eyes and a zombie-like gait, Eli had gone through the motions-toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, toothpaste in the cabinet, shaving cream in the first drawer, razors in the second, deodorant on the counter.

He had collected a dollop of shaving cream in his hands and applied it to his five o'clock shadow. Eli didn't remember what was going through his mind-Death knew he wasn't the deepest thinker-but as he had shakily held his razor, his mind blanked. He had suddenly felt like some scrawny, prepubescent twelve year-old experimenting with his old man's razors for the first time. How did he do this again? Chin or cheek first? What should he do now_? _Ask Pat for help? That wouldn't work, because not only would it be utterly humiliating, but Pat's chin was as smooth as his ass. His virtually hairless brother would be no help at all, not now.

Eli had stared into his own reflection with determination, slowly raising the blade to his face. As he tentatively applied the instrument to his chin, it happened-Eli had jostled the razor like an inexperienced fool and nicked himself. Real bad.

He had emerged from the bathroom with various pieces of blotted toilet paper stuck on his face and a bandage shamefully attached to his chin. Itching his armpit, Eli had given his brother a gruff nod and silently vowed to never speak of this to anyone.

"Dunno what to tell you," Eli said to the professor. Sensing that Stein was looking for a more complete answer, Eli made some calculated revisions to the events of that morning. "My hand slipped or something."

Stein raised one thin eyebrow. "In that case, I have some questions about your brother."

"_Pat?" _

"Do you have another brother?"

Feeling stupid, Eli slumped in his chair. "Uh, no."

"Right. In his session with me, your brother told me something interesting happened to him this morning."

Eli had been recovering from his own temporary madness when he had heard an earsplitting scream from within the bathroom. It had been his younger brother, Pat, howling every swear he knew.

Eli had just about broke down the door rushing to his brother's aid. Pat was on the ground, pants around his ankles, quivering in shock. Eli had brushed the shower curtain back, making sure that they were truly alone before asking Pat what the hell was going on. The answer was, well, awkward and surprising. Sitting in Stein's office, Eli realized what happened to Pat might be something he should discuss with a doctor, but Stein wasn't the type of doctor Eli trusted. Fear seized the weapon-what if Stein thought Pat had fallen back into old habits? Was that what this was all about?

"Look," Eli said to Stein with utmost seriousness. "Let me level with you. Pat's turned around since moving to DC, we both have. Test him if you want, his piss is clean. I'll swear to it right now, hand on Bible, if you got one. He's just got a weird streak, is all. You shouldn't read too far into it."

"Suffering a panic attack after viewing one's own genitals is usually cause for concern," Stein said levelly.

"It wasn't a-he was just surprised!" Eli squawked. "It happens to us all! What's concerning _me_ is that a perv like you is so interested. I don't care if you're a doctor, you aren't coming near my brother. Not without a warrant." He didn't grow up on the streets of Brooklyn without learning a thing or two about his rights.

Stein cocked her head to the side, more amused than impressed by Eli's protectiveness. "We don't need to discuss it any further if it makes you uncomfortable." She picked up a thin, ballpoint pen and twirled it, threading the object through her fingers with flawless dexterity. "Tell me Eli, have you heard of jamais vu? It's the opposite of deja vu. Instead of feeling like you are in a situation you've experienced before, something normal or commonplace is unfamiliar to you."

Eli was mesmerized by the pen spinning in Stein's hand. Suddenly, it slipped from her fingers and clattered on the desk, yanking Eli out of his trance. "Unlike deja vu, the experience is jarring," Stein said. "Perhaps even terrifying."

"What does jammy voo have to do with me or my brother?"

"It has everything to do with you two. Thank you for your time, I think we're done here."

Eli stood up, towering over the professor and her knobby desk, and as he walked out of the room he stopped short. As far as he was concerned, the weird stuff going on between him and his brother were insignificant. If Stein was going to do her doctor thing on anyone, the person she should really talk to wasn't a Thompson.

"You should talk to Kid," he said. "She's been real twitchy since yesterday. Makes me worried."

He opened the office door and closed it behind him. To Eli's surprise, Soul was loitering against the wall on the other side, presumably waiting for her turn. She gave Eli a curt nod before brushing past him towards Stein's door.

* * *

><p>Three hours of sleep did not a diligent student make. The night before, Mako could hardly close his eyes without tumbling through a series of 'what ifs' and 'therefores' that led to one conclusive image-Soul dead on the floor of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. He had even dozed off during meister theory, lingering in the classroom with his head down until Syd prodded his shoulder. It was unusual for Mako to behave this way, so he didn't get detention. Sleeping through Soul's appointment with Stein was punishment enough.<p>

He sat on the floor outside Stein's office, book open in his lap, straining to focus on the words printed on its thin pages. Soul's appointment started forty-five minutes ago, which seemed like a long time for Soul to speak to anyone, let alone Professor Stein.

Sometimes Mako felt like two different sets of memories were at war in his head, clamoring at each other, fighting for dominance. But if Mako thought his experiences with deja vu were chilling, he could not even imagine what Soul must be going through. How did it feel to know you are dead in one world and alive in another? From what he could tell, Soul remained ignorant of her previous death, but for how long would that last? He kept trying to imagine what it would be like to have a memory of his own death, or even a trace of a memory flickering on the edge of his subconscious, but he kept drawing a complete blank.

If Stein noticed something was wrong with Soul and came to the same conclusion…

He reread the same sentence for perhaps the fifth time. Concentrating on schoolwork was futile.

The click of the doorknob drew Mako's eyes away from the textbook and towards the door. Soul was standing at the threshold, looking back towards the professor. "Yeah yeah, I'll let you know," she said over her shoulder. Her voice had a bitter edge. "Creeper," she muttered under her breath.

Their eyes met. Soul let the door swing close on its own accord.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier," Mako blurted. "I know we said we would wait together but-" Once again, Mako found himself scrambling to tell his best friend a believable lie, because there was no way Mako could admit out loud that he'd fallen asleep in meister class. "-but I wasn't finished copying my notes and-"

"Chill out, it's cool." she said. "Professor Creepy Pasta says you're up." He probably had a few minutes to spare before actually walking into the lion's den, so Mako reached a lanky arm out to her as she turned to leave.

"Wait," Mako said, fingers lightly brushing Soul's wrist. "What did you two talk about in there?" _What does Stein know? What did you tell her?_

Soul noticeably stiffened at his touch, but her face revealed nothing. "Not much. I don't sense things like you do. I didn't have a lot to say."

"But you were in there for forty-five minutes-"

"Yeah and you'll probably talk your head off for twice as long." Soul brushed his hand off her wrist, leaving Mako's arm dangling in midair.

Mako sighed and clamped his text book shut. "I was just asking. If we're going to figure out how to set the universe back to normal, we have to start communicating." It struck him how smoothly the lie slipped off his tongue this time. Had he ever lied so much to his partner? Since the revelations of the previous night, Mako had tiptoed around all of his friends, hoping to tease out what information they had been giving Stein without letting on that Soul was at the middle of it all. Accomplishing that required a few lies. All in all, Mako was more talented at bursting through windows and fighting his opponent head on. Subterfuge was not his style.

He tried to meet eyes with his weapon again, but she avoided his gaze. "If I got anything to communicate, you'll be the first person I tell," Soul said. His weapon, slouched and grumpy, took off down the hall.

Mako watched her go, both suspicious and overcome with worry.

Stein was waiting for him in her office, several leaflets of notes splayed across her desk. She gestured for Mako to take a seat.

She wasted no time on frivolities or greetings. "I've interviewed several of your classmates this afternoon," she said. The professor seemed to hum with excitement. Chasing an impossible question must feel akin to pursuing a dangerous kishin for the experienced meister. "The data is coming together. It helps that you all have such different ranges of soul perception. I'm consistently amazed at how much your senses have picked up upon versus less perceptive meisters like, say, Black Star."

Soul perception was probably the one major skill Mako consistently beat his childhood friend at, not that she ever admitted it. One time, Black Star had actually made fun of him for having such superior perception. _Sensing stuff is the only thing you're good at, _she had sneered_. _It had made him angry, embarrassed even, to hear his oldest friend berate his one special talent in front of all of their friends, Stein, not to mention during a mission to stop an insane witch from reawakening the-

His train of thought jerked to a halt so quickly it flew off the freaking rails. Which mission was he even thinking of? The details escaped his consciousness just as quickly as they had came. Mako became acutely aware that Stein was staring, no, _analyzing _his behavior. "Sorry, I spaced out," he said.

She nodded. "Now that we are aware of the deja vu, it is beginning to feel more intense. Any offhand remark can trigger it. Has this been happening to you often?"

"Only since yesterday," Mako admitted. "The party I threw, everyone recognized the food I made but couldn't remember when I made it. I guess I made it, you know, _before._ And then there was the alley."

The alley. Soul's blue shirt, her sad eyes, her scar. Mako's hands tightened into fists. "There was supposed to be someone there waiting for us," he said. There was no question in his voice. "but they weren't. That's bad, isn't it? Deja vu-it's all based on repetition. What happens when something doesn't repeat? What if something new happens, something different?"

"Have you experienced anything else since yesterday?"

Was she really going to ignore all of Mako's questions? "No," Mako lied, again. Stein looked unconvinced. She was harder to deceive because she was smarter than Soul, or, more likely, because she didn't trust him as absolutely as Soul. "Well," Mako continued. "My sweaters fit differently than they used to. Looser. I guess I was beefier in the first timeline."

"What about Soul?" Stein asked. "Have you noticed anything abnormal about her?"

Mako's breath caught at the mention of Soul's name. There was no way, _no way _Stein had already figured out that Soul was the reason for _everything._ He figured it out quickly because if anyone would subconsciously react to Soul's death or revival, it would be him. At best, Stein had a theory. No, an inkling. Stein was a scientist after all. She wouldn't move forward without the proper evidence to back up her conclusions. And she was asking Mako to provide him that evidence.

Like hell he would.

"She's great!," Maka said, voice dripping with enthusiasm. "She's all settled at home and back to her usual, lazy self. Totally recovered from her injury."

"She seemed off when she spoke to me."

A burning need to discover what on earth Soul and Stein talked about for forty-five minutes washed over Mako. Stein knew something he didn't, and that could not stand.

"Uh, no offense professor," Mako started sheepishly. "but Soul isn't really your biggest fan. I mean, she can't relax around you. That's probably why she was acting weird during your interview."

Reaching one leathery hand towards her head, Stein began to crank the screw protruding from her skull. She turned it only a few times before hearing a satisfying click. "You're right," she finally said steadily. "That explains her behavior."

Mako let out a shaky breath, thankful that he had successfully diffused Stein's interest in Soul, for now at least. Stein scribbled something in indecipherable handwriting on her notepad. Since Stein wasn't hurtling any more uncomfortable questions towards him, Mako decided to take some initiative.

"Professor Stein," Mako said. "You never answered my questions. We're basically redoing a period from our past, but what happens if we don't repeat every single thing we did? Things are already coming out differently than they did before, I can feel it. Are there any consequences for all of this?"

"You misunderstand time travel," Stein said. "Many believe that traveling backwards in time will change the future. For instance, if you killed your grandfather before you are born, in the future you will cease to exist." Stein lightly scratched her cheek. "But they're wrong. Going backwards in time doesn't change the future. It creates a new, separate future. If you wanted to go back in time to assassinate someone, you are free to do so with impunity. The future will change, but there will be no consequences for you."

Mako felt a flicker of hope. "So if something happened to us in the first timestream, it doesn't have to happen a second time."

"Maybe." That spark of hope burning in Mako's mind began to fizzle out. "Our case is complicated. Thanks to some impressively imprecise magic, we are straddling two timestreams at once. The more they contradict each other, the more precarious they become. It's imperative that we restore the original timestream and destroy the new one."

Mako did not know where his next question came from. It fell naturally from his lips without thought or reason, only embittered regret and anxiety. "Do you think a witch did this?"

Stein's answer came just as naturally. "Yes, I do."

"The same one from Italy?"

"Yes."

That was all Mako really needed to hear. "Is there anything else?" he asked. "I think I should go back to class."

"You're dismissed."

Numb with quiet hatred, Mako picked his backpack off the ground and proceeded to exit the office.

When Mako had been drawn to that alley, he had sworn he felt a witch. There had been of course nothing and no one there, but now he knew that there was supposed to be.

The witch must have done this, he was sure of it. But why? If the witch succeeded in killing Soul the first time around, why would he go back in time so she could survive? What was his goal? For a witch to risk everything to turn back the clock and resurrect an already vanquished enemy, an enemy who really was only a student, the potential benefits must be truly vast.

But the witch's motives didn't matter. The important thing was that Soul was alive in _this _timeline, and Mako had to prevent anyone, friend or foe, from changing that. Even if it meant sacrificing the original universe.

Consumed by his thoughts, Mako didn't expect to find Soul waiting for him outside Stein's office, sitting against the wall in the exact spot he occupied while waiting for her.

"I thought you left," Mako said with quiet wonder.

Soul shrugged. "I decided to hang around after all." She gave Mako a half smile, which both weakened and strengthened him. She got back on her feet and walked beside Mako down the hall. "I skipped our last class," she added.

Instead of lecturing her, Mako softened. "I'm not even surprised."

"You and Stein talk about anything interesting?" Soul asked. Her tone was way more nonchalant than Mako's was when he pressed her for details earlier. Was she trying to pry information out of him too?

"Not really," Mako said. "We just talked about the party." Mako's eyebrows rose as inspiration struck. "Stein asked me how you were doing though," he said carefully, watching Soul's face. "I said that you made a full recovery. She seemed fine with that and didn't really bring you up again."

Soul's response was mild. "Nice to hear she's so concerned."

To hell with this passive aggressive, manipulative bullshit. Mako was going to quit dancing around the subject and ask Soul right out if there was another reason Stein might be worried about her. He opened his mouth to just _ask her _when he heard a certain shrill voice call his name.

"_Mako, my baby!" _Spirit Albarn was upon him in an instant, smothering her son in her tailored jacket and ample bosom. It was Mako's opinion that all of his mama's clothes were far too small for her, including her work clothes, but of course his criticisms always fell upon deaf ears. It was easy for him to forget that Spirit was not like normal moms. At only age 32, Spirit's hair burned bright with youth and vivacity, and her face was smooth and unblemished with age. While working for Shibusen grayed Stein's hair and weathered her skin, Spirit remained one of the youngest looking, most energetic employees. Maybe eating witch souls was the key to eternal youth.

"How has your day been, pumpkin? Have you been studying hard?" Spirit asked. "You're so smart, just like your papa. It makes me so proud!"

"Mmprf." Mako pried himself out of Spirit's arms. "Mama, don't _embrace _me at school! It's _embarrassing." _

At first Spirit looked hurt, but her face soon changed to annoyance and jealousy. Soul coughed awkwardly in her hand. "Oh, it's you." Spirit quipped. The two weapons stared each other down, and Spirit thrust her son back into her bosom. Mako hung limp in his mother's arms. These spats between his mother and his weapon never ended well.

"It's so good to see you out of the hospital," Spirit said. "Now that you're well, I'm going to kindly remind you that there's only one ladyscythe in _my_ baby's life. He's too good for a floozy like you."

Soul responded with a single, sarcastic laugh. "Who are _you _to call _me _a floozy?"

Spirit huffed with indignation. "Well," Spirit said, searching for a comeback. "Next time you try to sacrifice yourself for my angel, you better _actually_ do it_." _

Though he was still trapped in his mother's warm embrace, Mako felt cold fury rise from the depths of his heart. His mama did not just say, she did not just imply…

He wrenched himself out of his mother's caring arms with surprisingly violence. "_How could you say that?" _Mako seethed. "What's wrong with you-_Soul almost died!"_

His sudden vehemence took both Spirit and Soul by surprise. "I was only making a joke," she said quietly. "Sweetie, you know me and Soul have these jokes all the time. She calls me names, I threaten to kill her, and we all go home feeling much better." She reached for her son's hand. "I don't actually want anything to happen-please don't chop your mother, I love you!"

Poisonous resentment seeped into Mako's voice. "I don't want to talk anymore. Soul, come on."

Mako stalked off down the hall, Soul trailing behind. She kept her hands in her pockets, and he could feel her eyes trained on him, watching her partner for any sign that he might explain his frayed temper. They must have been halfway to the school gate before Soul made a move to break the silence.

"You were kind of harsh," she said.

Mako maintained his frown, opting to placate Soul with a shrug. "I don't joke about that stuff." Soul dying in the middle of a mission was too real an anxiety to joke about.

"Look, she didn't mean it, and I can handle your mom on my own. You don't have to rush to my defense."

_Yes I do_, Mako silently replied. Because someone had to protect Soul, especially if she was too busy defending him to protect herself. In some sick, hollow way Mako felt that he owed her. Owed her for letting her die, for almost letting her die again. He couldn't let his fear control him anymore.

* * *

><p>Gym sucked. Class sucked. These were facts Soul had known since before she moved to Death City. But today, she learned something new.<p>

Talking to Stein one on one _sucked. _

It was like being dissected, but without the scalpel. If Soul did something as little as twitch her foot and Stein would be on her like a swarm of locusts, picking her apart for any satisfying detail. Soul did not care to be interrogated, by anyone, but early on in their talk Stein struck a nerve.

"How are recovering from your injury?" Stein had asked. "Last I heard from Dr. Medusa you were doing quite well." Soul's hand firmly held down her left wrist. Her expression must have darkened, because Stein gave her a questioning look. That woman didn't miss a thing.

Every time Soul stumbled or made a mistake, a red face laughed at her from deep in her subconscious. She wanted to keep cool, to bury the lurking, writhing demon, but she had enough.

Soul hoped she was making the right decision. "I need to tell you something," Soul said. "Something that I haven't told anybody. It's about Dr. Medusa."

Instead of coming clean about the horrifying nightmares and the violent urges, she told Stein that she didn't trust the doctor. That when Medusa tried to administer her checkup, Soul felt an irrational fear and distrust that caused her to flee the clinic immediately. Stein was especially interested in the sensations Soul felt when interacting with Medusa. Would she describe it has pins and needles? An ache? Migraine? Had she interacted with him since then? The answer was a fervent 'hell no,' Soul had actually avoided him at all costs. What if she lost control and actually attacked the guy? She was a weapon after all, and Medusa was an unarmed doctor. Heebie jeebies didn't justify murder.

Before she left, Stein told her to report back if she felt anything weird around Dr. Medusa again. Soul had no intention of running into Medusa, ever, but she agreed all the same.

Still, a part of Soul wondered why she didn't just tell Stein about the Oni. The demon had evolved from a conceptual afterimage to an entirely separate entity, festering and growing within her soul until it had named itself. Oni was always lurking, its consciousness bubbling, ready to take control and lash out when Soul let down her guard.

Soul spent all day pushing Stein, Medusa, and Oni from her thoughts, but she didn't pay attention to a word said in class. No wonder people called her broody. After the end of their final lecture of the day, Mako approached her uncertainly.

"Hey," he said. "I was thinking, it's been a while since we hung out, just the two of us. We should go grab takeout or coffee. And, you know, chat."

Hearing Mako talk about hanging out 'just the two of us' made Soul flush. Did he want to spend quality time with his partner, or did he just want to get out of cooking? Regardless, she agreed.

Their walk was quiet, pensive. Soul's nightmares journeyed with her during the daylight, and it made her feel dangerous. It was in moments like these that she wished she knew what went on in other people's heads. If everyone had little demons laughing at them in the backs of their brains, that meant she wasn't as big of a freak, right?

"Look at that!" Mako said in dismay. The line to the nearest Deathbucks went out the door, probably due to the after school rush. "This blows," he said. Sometime during their walk, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows. "We should go to the one on the corner of Bones and Oak."

She didn't know why she didn't think of it before, but Soul suddenly wondered if there was a reason Mako wanted to go somewhere to talk. He seemed a little eager for mid-afternoon coffee. The crowds of pedestrians and students thinned as they walked further away, and the city's regular hustle and bustle grew silent. Soul mused that there was a reason the Deathbucks on Bones and Oak was less popular; things got really sketchy from here on out, and in a place named Death City, that was really saying something.

Mako noticed it coming first. His soul perception must have pinged, because he stopped dead in his tracks and looked down a dark, hazy street. He stepped forward, as if to contemplate whether to pursue whatever threat he sensed. It was becoming an annoying habit of his, to just stop dead, gasp, and run off somewhere without saying anything to his goddamn partner. Before he could run headfirst into the darkness, something ran headfirst towards them.

A hulking figure emerged from the shadows, staggering as it attempted to keep its enormous body from losing balance. The partners froze, stunned by the creature that was panting before them. It was seven feet tall, with dark leathery skin and a ripped outfit covered in stripes. The creature's flesh undulated and shivered, shifting to become something utterly unrecognizable. Part human, part beast, the creature roared as it shifted between forms.

The monster finally opened its eyes. One eye was brown. The other was inscribed with a triangular rune, scalding red over milky white. A snout grew large on the creature's face, and it pointed a single claw towards their direction.

"It's you!" it said. Soul started-was its unfocused eyes directed at her, Mako, or both of them? It was hard to tell whether this was a friend or foe, but the scythe wasn't the type to take chances.

"Mako, get ready." she said, already feeling her skin dissolve into light and rearrange into sharp steel. She hadn't fought anything since the incident in Italy, but she was still in her prime. Soul materialized as a fully formed scythe in Mako's hands. It always felt so natural and right when he gripped her handle and whirled her around his wrists. Two souls fighting as one. It was in these moments, when Mako was somersaulting out of harm's way and her blade was slicing through kishin flesh, that Soul felt most like herself. The endless adrenaline rush of fulfilling her purpose alongside the person she cared for most, this was what Soul lived for.

"That soul," Mako muttered. The creature had grown a tail now, which thrashed from side to side. The thing looked like it would charge at any second.

"We can take it," she replied, her voice echoing in the chamber of her weapon space. "We'll take it out, together. We always do." She felt Mako's fingers tighten around her handle. Personally, Soul didn't care what it was. She had one job and one job only. It stayed the same regardless of who they were fighting. A small voice in the back of her head spoke soothingly, offering her power and strength in return for control. Soul ignored it.

The creature started snapping its jaws at them, but whether it was threatening them or simply trying to speak wasn't clear. Mako stood stock still in the street. She could feel his hands trembling as they gripped her shaft.

"Mako, stop staring and do something!" The creature took a step forward, followed by a second and a third. Suddenly it was barreling down the street, careening left to right before finally approaching-

Right before the creature came within ten feet of the weapon/meister pair, Mako did something Soul never in her most horrid nightmares anticipated.

He wound her over his shoulder and heaved her away as far as he could.

Soul was stunned, speechless, as her scythe body spun in the air and lodged itself into a nearby brick wall. She stayed stuck, unable to process what had just happened to her.

She was in the middle of battle and her meister threw her away.

Her meister threw her away.

Mako. Threw. Her. Away.

_Of course he did_, the Oni whispered.

Soul transformed back into her human shape, her body quivering from the intense feelings of rejection that rocked her core. She looked up and saw Mako, not really engaged in battle, but adeptly dodging the wolf-thing's attempts to get close and maul him. In truth, it didn't look like he was being attacked at all. The monster was far too clumsy and slow to catch Mako, its enormous claws scraping brick and stone instead of Mako's flesh.

After tripping over itself, the monster opened its jaws to release a shattering roar. It's left eye glowed bright, and a flash of light engulfed its entire body. Soul shielded her eyes from the blinding light, and when she opened them again, the wolf monster had vanished.

Mako was grinning ear to ear. "Did you see that? I sent that thing running. Or teleporting. I don't really get it, but it was still pretty cool."

Soul couldn't muster the words.

She felt adrift, abandoned, _angry, _and the person who threw her away so freaking easily didn't even notice that she was upset.

"Forget coffee," she said in a low voice. "I'm going home."

She took off, taking advantage of Mako's exhausted state as she outran the feelings of despair and abandonment spreading through her chest. Her insecurities followed her home all the same.

* * *

><p>Death the Kid waited outside Stein's office, watching the second hand on her watch tick closer to 4:30 p.m. Arriving too early or too late wasn't acceptable; she had a reputation to uphold, after all. She vaguely remembered learning about a magical train that, despite hurtling through the sky and desert at breakneck speed, was impeccably on time at every stop. Just thinking about the train conjured phantom sensations of wind whipping her face and grains of sand flying into her eyes. Very strange.<p>

When 4:30 p.m. arrived, Kid knocked on the office door four times and let herself in. The room was smoky and foul, and the smell of tobacco wafted into the hallway. Stein was at her seat, cigarette between her teeth, perusing some disorderly papers. The professor was blatantly disregarding Shibusen's fire code by smoking indoors, again, but this wasn't the time to remind her.

Kid produced her own notepad, wherein she had made some detailed notes of her experiences over the past 24 hours. The deja vu itself was a small matter compared to her general well being. Since Mako's party, Kid's seemed to fluctuate between sudden sickliness and glowing health. One minute Kid had felt inundated with power, the next, like she was suffering kidney failure. Most suspicious was the way Kid's soul perception was acting up on numerous occasions, the souls of the entire city's population flooding Kid's senses without warning, leaving her with one hell of a migraine, only vanish just as suddenly.

Stein was predictably uneager to start their appointment on time, so Kid cleared her throat. "Professor, may we get started? I have some concerns I want to address."

The professor finally looked up from her notes. "Well, Kid what is it you-"

Her cigarette fell out of her mouth and landed on the desk, and Stein stared slack jawed, face overwhelmed with both curiosity and shock.

"What is it?" Kid asked, suddenly self-conscious. "What's wrong? Is something on my face? Oh no-" She whipped a compact out of her pocket and opened it up, but her eyeliner remained sharp and unsmudged. She tipped the mirror of her compact at a wider angle, and gasped.

For the first time in her life, Death the Kid was truly symmetrical.

Her sanzu lines. They were connected.


	5. Chapter 5

_Knock, knock, knock. _

The wood paneling of Soul's bedroom door sounded hollow and cold as Mako rapped on it with his knuckles, perhaps for the fourth or fifth time since Soul stormed home and locked herself inside. He could hear music-classic rock? Alternative? The hell if he knew!-dully thudding through her stereo. Not only was she trying to shut him out, but she was trying to shut him up.

Groaning, Mako turned his back to the door and leaned against the cold wood, slowly sinking to the floor. The wants of women were truly as capricious as the wind. He was never going to understand them, or Soul for that matter.

The door opened, music wafting into the hall, and Mako fell backwards into Soul's bedroom. Without a word, Soul stepped over him and headed towards the kitchen, sparing not one glance in her meister's direction. Mako huffed and scrambled to his feet, tailing after her.

Soul left the fridge open as she drank milk directly out of the carton, and the appliance's light illuminated the dark kitchen, glinting off the liquid dribbling down from the corner of her lips. Mako typically found Soul's habit of drinking out of the milk carton both gross and charming, but in his frazzled confusion, Mako could only stand frozen. She had finally came out, and he had so many questions burning on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't decide which one to say first.

This silent storminess of hers had come on suddenly. She had walked home alone from the street where they had fought the creature, leaving Mako confused and sheepishly assessing the destruction they had caused during their fight. Afterwards he went to the library to get some answers on this beast, and oh man, did he find some answers. Instead of eagerly listening while he reported the results of his research, Soul had ignored him _even more. _

"Why won't you talk to me?" was the question he finally settled on.

Soul wiped her mouth. "Because talking to you makes me feel like I'm on my period," she deadpanned. She replaced the milk carton and closed the fridge, sauntering back into the privacy of her room as abruptly as she left it. As if to punctuate her irritation, she waited for Mako to catch up with her before slamming her bedroom door in his face.

"That's ok," Mako called through the door. "I'll just be in the kitchen, reading, researching, useful things..." Slumped over in disappointment, Mako ambled into the kitchen. He hoped Soul would get over herself and share in this discovery he made, but it seemed like she had completely forgotten about his earlier victory.

Mako's soul perception was a work in progress. Distinguishing weapon from human souls was easy, and human souls from kishin-egg souls was even easier, but soul perception as a whole was a complex and limitless craft. Only the most skilled meisters could read the character of a soul, and those with even greater power could even see through a witch's soul protect. Mako could sorta read a soul's character, but he was still a novice at best. Nothing at all like Professor Stein.

But even a beginner would have recognized the writhing green and purple soul Mako saw that afternoon.

The roaring monster he had fought near Deathbucks was none other than the Shewolf. The woman who stole the grand witch's magic eye. The immortal. A creature so hated, feared, and resilient, even Shibusen's greatest enemies saw fit to imprison her for all eternity.

Granted, the Shewolf looked nothing like she did in the textbook. He wondered how on earth the illustrator rendered the wolf's build so incorrectly, but he supposed that was what happened when a legendary creature was imprisoned for centuries. And who knows, maybe she looked so different because she got a lot of exercise in witch prison. Even so, there was no doubt about the monster's identity. When Mako recognized that soul, his thoughts immediately jumped from his own welfare to the weapon thrumming in his hands. His arms shook from fear and the pits of his shirtsleeves grew damp with sweat. This wasn't going to go down like Italy. The Shewolf was in a whole other league than the demonsword. Fighting was only going to get both of them killed. When the beast charged, Mako acted.

He had tossed Soul to one side and performed a forward roll to the other. When he saw that Soul's blade was embedded in a cold wall several meters away, Mako knew he had to go head to head with a monster even witches couldn't kill.

In that moment, Mako had felt a strange, weighty sensation of fate that he no longer found odd. He suddenly knew this wasn't the first time he fought the Shewolf unarmed.

And he won-well, sort of.

Ok, there was something seriously _wrong _with the Shewolf, something he intuitively knew was different from whatever happened the last time they met. She kept transforming in and out of wolf form, clutching her head, stumbling around as if drunk. While it wounded Mako's pride to admit it, it was unclear if the Shewolf was fighting him at all. Limping and roaring, she aggressively had swiped at Mako a few times before blundering away. He was almost offended that this mythical beast didn't bother to kill him.

Surviving any encounter with the immortal Shewolf was a win as far as Mako was concerned, even if he didn't actually land a single punch.

The library books on the kitchen table consisted of an encyclopedia of monsters, a physics textbook, and a volume on basic magical principles. He was pouring over these books for an unknown amount of time when Soul finally exited her room again to make coffee, despite the fact that she had only just drank out of the milk carton like an animal. Irked by her continued silence, the meister raised his textbook off the table to hide his face. If she wasn't going to speak to him, he wasn't going to look at her.

When he lowered his textbook, Mako was surprised to see that Soul was sitting across from him at the table. She stared steadily at the open books as she stirred her coffee, but said nothing.

He couldn't contain himself. "Are you actually thirsty?" he asked without humor. "Or are you just here to glare at me?"

Soul narrowed her ruby eyes and lifted her coffee mug to her lips. Without breaking eye contact, she blew on the steaming liquid and took a long, deliberate sip. He drummed his fingers on the table, feeling more and more irritated by the second.

"This is ridiculous," Mako said. "If you're going to sit here, I'm going to talk. So, the monster thing we fought, that was the Shewolf!" He waited for a reaction and received none. "Don't you know who that is?" Again, Soul did not answer. "Come on, Stein definitely talked about it. It's the immortal, the one who stole the witch's magic eye!"

Soul perked up at this new information. "Immortal?"

He couldn't suppress a triumphant grin, because he had finally gotten her to say something. "Yea, I recognized the soul immediately. It's one of a kind," Mako said excitedly. He pulled a large tome out of his stack of books and flipped through its pages. He had to find the page he dog-eared, but where was it? "But get this, it turns out that the witch's eye-" He licked his thumb and flipped one last page. The yellow paper was covered in archaic script, and an illustration of a familiar red rune. "Here! It's confirmed that the witch's eye has powerful spatial magic that can manipulate the second and third dimensions, but since time is the fourth spatial dimension I think maybe the Shewolf used her magic eye-"

His lecture was interrupted by Soul slamming her cup of coffee onto the table, warm liquid sloshing over its rim. She then slapped her hands on the book's open pages, palm covering the illustration of the magic eye. Mako looked up from the book, only to discover Soul leaning over the table, eyes mere inches from his own. They were level but livid.

"Back up," she said in a low voice. "Are you saying you _knew _that thing was immortal? As in impossible to kill?"

Was she questioning his soul perception or his knowledge? "Yeah, I knew right away."

Soul's arms started to quiver. "You knew it was dangerous and-and you still tried to fight _by yourself?" _

"Why are you so mad? I handled it, didn't I?"

Her voice was a low, incensed growl. "You can be so goddamn selfish."

Mako shot out of his seat. "Selfish?" he said as his temper rose and curdled within his chest. "_Selfish? _How is making sure at least one of us got out alive selfish? How is keeping you safe from a rampaging immortal selfish?"

"It wasn't about you keeping me safe, it was about showing off!" Soul yelled. She thrust an accusatory finger towards her partner.

The meister balked at his weapon, both hamstrung and infuriated by her words. "That isn't true!"

"Isn't it?" Soul clasped her hands together and adopted a squeaky tone. "Professor Stein, _please please _train me. Soul look, I fought the werewolf, _how cool is that?"_

"My voice does not sound-"

"Don't change the subject. I'm not dense. You've been hung up getting stronger ever since Italy."

A mixture of steadfast denial and fear overwhelmed the meister. It was true that he had been a little fixated on becoming more powerful, but Soul didn't know what he knew. She didn't know that he was truly in the right, that protecting her really was a top priority. While he could forgive her for not understanding his motivation, it burned Mako to the core that she was so offended. Everything he had done was for her own good, why couldn't she see that?

"So what?" Mako said quietly. "What's so bad about wanting to be strong enough to protect the people I care about?"

"Because you have the whole thing backwards!" Soul said with a wavering voice. "The meister fights to make the weapon stronger and the weapon fights to protect the meister, not the other way around!"

Flushed with anger, Mako's word began to outpace his thoughts as insults rolled off his tongue like water. "If I'm selfish, you must be ten times worse! You can't even give me the silent treatment without getting in my face!"

"I'm your weapon, Mako. It's my job to protect you and _you threw me away_!"

"Why do I have to be protected by you all the time, Soul?" He spat out her name like it was an insult. "Don't you get it-"

"You tried to fight an immortal without-"

"-I hate being protected by you!"

It came out louder than he expected, more forcefully than he intended, and Soul was struck speechless. Her usual mask of blank apathy slipped, and Mako became painfully aware that he said The Wrong Thing.

It would not be in character for his partner's eyes to well with tears and her ribcage to be wracked with choking sobs. Mako wished his weapon was someone who cried when she was upset. No, Soul's anger and sadness was vindictive and damning. She simultaneously withdrew and lashed out, weaponizing her indifference into something more brutal. This quiet, brooding silence was a threshold of anger Mako had never before crossed. He saw her face register the horrified shock for only a moment before she set her jaw, and her expression hardened into resentment, maybe even hate.

"Wait," Mako said. "I-I didn't really mean-"

"I know what you meant," Soul said coldly. Oh Death, Mako so preferred it when Soul's eyes were alight with passionate fury over when they were dull with quiet scorn. Without a word, Soul turned around and headed back into her room. Mako followed, only to catch her exiting her room, crossbody bag slung across her torso. She made a beeline to the front door.

"What are you doing?" he asked. Mako didn't hide the worry or guilt from his voice.

It was optimistic to think voicing concern would buy him forgiveness. With a hand on the doorknob, Soul stopped and briefly looked over her shoulder. "Getting out of your face," she said in a harsh murmur, and then she was gone.

The library books laid listlessly on the kitchen table, robbed of all purpose and significance now that he had chased Soul away. Mako sat at the kitchen table, drained from arguing, and ran a finger on the illustration of the Shewolf's magic eye. Should he tell someone about his encounter with the Shewolf, or his theory that she used her eye to turn back time? But why would she do that? For what purpose was this all _for? _Nothing Mako had thus far discovered really added up, except for perhaps Soul's role in this whole debacle.

He flopped forward and lay his head on the open book.

* * *

><p>Soul did not know where she was going until she was already trudging down the street from her apartment building. She just needed to get away, from Mako, from her rising suspicion that her partner did not need her as much as she needed him. Oni, of course, could not be outrun. She carried it inside her soul.<p>

If her fight with Mako proved anything, it was that Oni was a burden she would shoulder alone.

_I hate being protected by you. _Six words, and Soul was abandoned by the person she trusted the most. Honestly, she wasn't sure why she felt so surprised. Wasn't this what happened with all of her relationships? Eventually, maintaining a relationship with Soul became a chore, then a burden, then a punishment.

She didn't do well alone, and sow that she felt unwelcome in her own home, there was really one place for Soul to go, and only one person she could rely on.

When she finally arrived at the Japanese-style apartment, Tsubasa was the one who answered the door. "Oh, hi there Soul," he asked. Soul's poker face was firmly in place, but Tsu was always far too perceptive for his own good. She could see his indigo eyes register that Soul was distressed, and he opened the door further to allow Soul inside.

In a strange twist of irony, Black Star's living space was far tidier than Mako's ever was. Soul wondered if Tsu yelled at his meister to clean up as often as Mako yelled at her. She could dimly hear a mixture of samba and hip-hop coming from behind a screen door. Black Star's silhouette was stained black on the screen, and if Soul didn't know any better, she would have said Black Star was dancing.

Soul cast a wary eye towards Tsubasa, who shrugged. "Zumba," was all he said.

Tsu slid the screen back a crack and discretely whispered into the other room. "What?" Black Star yelled above the music. "Tell her I'm in the middle of something, I haven't even-" Her voice quieted as her weapon continued whispering. "Oh. Hold up, hold up."

The music abruptly turned off, and Soul watched the screen door slide open all the way, revealing Black Star dressed in sweatpants and a sports bra. She pulled her hair out of its short ponytail and threaded her fingers through it, green eyes immediately seeking out her friend.

"'Sup girl," Black Star said. "What brings you to my palace?" Her arms swooped as she gestured around the small, minimally furnished room.

Soul sat crosslegged on a mat by a small coffee table and shrugged. "I just thought we could hang out."

"Where's Ma-"

"Not speaking to him."

"Oh."

Black Star's eyebrows knitted together, and her dark hazel eyes darted from side to side as she thought of what to say. Looking over her shoulder, Black Star performed a series of elaborate hand signals to communicate with her weapon, who silently nodded and retreated into a different room, leaving the girls alone. The ninja sat crosslegged on the floor across from Soul and gave her friend a serious, pensive look.

"Listen," she finally said, leaning forward. After another pause, the ninja reached out and placed a caring, sisterly hand on Soul's shoulder. The scythe was in no mood for consolation, and for a brief moment, she feared Black Star would attempt to talk about squishy feelings Soul was not prepared to articulate.

"You want me to punch him in the crotch?" Black Star finally asked.

Despite her turmoil, Soul snickered. A spiteful part of the scythe found the idea awfully tempting, and her mouth broke in a wide grin. "Nah," she said. "It would be hysterical but I don't think it would help."

"How 'bout blackmail? I got a thousand Mako stories from preschool."

People really underestimated what a great friend Black Star could be. She was loud, she was arrogant, but in between all of her posturing and self-congratulating, the ninja didn't half-ass anything. Not fighting, not food, and certainly not friendship. The earnest determination on Black Star's face caused Soul to clutch her chest as laughter bubbled up her throat.

"You think I'm kidding?" Black Star exclaimed. "A god has to punish her followers when they act like dicks. It's in the freaking commandments. Albarn should _know better_ than to test my divine wrath."

Soul was smiling now, not completely recovered from the deep wound festering in her heart, but she felt better, happier, and above all, less lonely. "Never, ever change Black Star."

Black Star grinned. "You can't improve perfection."

The ninja did not press Soul for details of why she was avoiding her meister, nor did she spend a lot of time focusing on Soul's predicament. As Black Star told Soul stories of her greatness, acting them out, sometimes even recruiting Tsubasa to help, Soul could not help but wonder whether their effortless friendship had an expiration date, too. Getting close to people used to be Soul's most profound fear, but making friends was not nearly as wrenching as losing them. As happy and loved as she felt here with her friends, Soul ached to return to her apartment, to her meister, to fight and yell until she convinced him that he really did need her.

When night fell and Soul rolled out an extra mat to sleep in Black Star and Tsubasa's shared room, she asked, "Did you ever talk to Stein about this deja vu stuff?"

Laying on her back, Black Star wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, it was boring as hell. All she did was ramble about how I have the 'worst soul perception in the entire school.'" She punctuated her distaste with air quotes. "Stein said that if I feel even a twinge of deja vu, the universe was probably dead already. Whatever the hell _that's _supposed to mean."

"I think it means you really suck at soul perception."

"Shut up, I'm flawless."

"So, you haven't felt anything ever?" Soul asked, slightly envious. "This whole time?"

'Nooope." Black Star examined the tips of her blue hair between her fingertips. "Tsubasa's been getting weirded out on the reg though. Yo Tsubizzle, what was it that messed you up last night?"

Tsubasa was sitting up on his own mat, long inky hair down, peacefully reading a book, but when he looked up from his book he was frowning. "It was the moon," he said. "I looked at it and got this horrible, sick feeling. But it was probably nothing."

Just thinking about the moon stirred something within Soul, a haunting memory that carried both triumph and sadness. The shadow weapon's denial was reminiscent of Soul's own reaction to his first brushes with deja vu, but these shards of broken memory were mounting into something larger, something more dangerous. When the shoe finally dropped and the flood of recognition and pain swamped their senses, Soul hoped she would be ready.

* * *

><p>A flash of fluorescent green lightning burned in the desert outside Death City. A figure fell to the ground with a loud thump, and snarled in pain. The creature writhed in the sand and slowly transformed from wolf to man.<p>

Free was having a red letter day.

The werewolf was never the brightest crayon in the box. That his grand prisonbreak scheme was repeatedly foiled by chopsticks was a testament to his lack of imagination and intellect. But he had never believed himself to be truly stupid until he accidentally turned back time.

The magic eye wasn't his to begin with, so how was he supposed to know what it was capable of? Free didn't steal the eye because he was interested in its magic. He took it because he could. In his haste to push boundaries and bend rules he didn't agree with, however, Free failed to grab the user's manual. Now, centuries after initially stealing the eye and years after his escape from prison, his ignorance had come back to bite him in the ass.

Free was trying to teleport himself back to Death City when it had happened. He visualized Shibusen as he remembered it all those years ago and performed his chant, but instead of vanishing and reappearing somewhere else, green lightning burst from his eye and shot towards the sky. The force of it thrust Free to the ground, and he lay pinned as the lightning surged between his body and the cosmos above. He felt everything shift and swirl as his mind split in two, and in his dizzying trance, Free's mind remained stuck on the image of Shibusen three years before.

After that, his perception grew hazy. Free remembered waking and finding his sight split in half-one eye showing the world he knew, and his magic eye depicting an older world, one untouched by Asura's reign of madness and destruction. Moreover, the people were different. Stumbling through the streets of Death City, each of Free's eyes sent conflicting images to his brain. Everything undulated in his vision.

Even the Last Deathscythe, a weapon he wasn't exactly buddies with but recognized as an ally, became a vision of contradiction, appearing as his usual, broody self in one eye and an alarmed, petite girl in the other. He was too overwhelmed to control his speech or even his body. His skin twitched and transformed into a thick wolf's pelt, and it took all of Free's strength and control to teleport away from the madness screaming in his senses.

The desert was empty and calm, and that was where the wolfman stayed.

Free wanted to just fall asleep in the sand, to quiet the aching headache that was driving him slowly insane, when he felt a bare foot land on his cheek, pinning the left side of his face to the ground.

His magic eye viewed a dark silhouette that loomed over the wolfman, looking down at him with a serpentine smile. The figure was dressed in black pants and a form-fitting shirt that exposed his arms. A chain of tattooed corkscrewed around the defined arms, and instead of a familiar coil of braided hair, a barbed goatee framed his chin. A hood was pulled over the figure's head, and its yellow, scathing eyes sent a chill through Free's torso. The outfit and hair were different, but Free would recognize those narrow, calculating eyes anywhere. It was Medusa Gorgon, reborn.

"You're hairier than I expected," Medusa said. "Dumber, too. Still, your hairy face feels nice underneath my foot." The honeyed voice Free learned to avoid was lower than he remembered, rougher. The witch used his foot to turn the wolfman's face to the other side, scrutinizing him. As Medusa pressed Free's face down into the sand, the wolfman's nonmagic eye bulged. He could feel the witch's foot, but his eye saw nothing but air.

"Look, I can't say I'm a fan of what you did to the world," he heard Medusa say. "You're interfering with a very crucial period in my experiment, my life's work really, so I'd really appreciate it if you said your dumb doggy spell and-"

"I don't understand," Free rasped. Medusa ignored him, pressing his foot harder onto the wolfman's cheek. "How-you're supposed to be dead."

The sensation of an invisible foot digging into his face vanished, and Free flipped his face to the other side. He flinched when he saw this new, masculine Medusa crouching by his head, peering intently at his face with keen interest.

The witch cocked his head to the side. "Now that's not what I like to hear."

Holding out his arm, Medusa mumbled a spell that caused his tattoos to slither off his skin, which writhed and hissed as they took the solid shape of an enormous black viper. The snake unhinged its terrible jaws and tenderly collected the sprawled wolfman into its mouth.

Standing on the viper's head, the two magic individuals took off into the sky as silently as desert wind.


	6. Chapter 6

Soul never came home, so naturally Mako never went to sleep.

Blair had missed the big blow-up around the kitchen table, and when he returned from work to find Mako sulking in his room and Soul gone, his reaction was cryptic. "One day," the cat had purred. "You and Soul are going to settle your arguments in a more fun way. Trust me." Sometimes it was like Blair lived in an entire different universe, one where everyone was a nudist and nobody ever argued. Mako did not know what crazy, perverse place existed in Blair's mind, but he kind of wanted to live there.

That night he had tossed in his bed, unable to reach that perfect balance of hot and cold, yo-yoing between the fear that Soul was never coming back and the equally believable hypothesis that it wouldn't matter anyway. At some point during the night, Mako came to the conclusion that he didn't have anything to feel sorry about after all. Since when did Mako Albarn apologize for caring too much? Never, that's when.

He finally caught a glimpse of her at school. Soul was sitting a row above their usual seats right next to Tsubasa, her white hair lazily draped over one shoulder as she kept her head down on the desk, snoozing peacefully.

Mako's plans to shake Soul awake and reconcile were swiftly dashed by the only person who could humiliate him in less than five seconds.

"YAHOO!" A tan, wiry arm looped around Mako's neck, and a fist began to dig into his scalp and muss his hair. "It's time to pay the price for your sins," Black Star said with a gleeful voice. "Don't try nooging me back, I'm immune."

The noogie intensified, scrambling Mako's thoughts as he clawed at the ninja's unrelenting hand, to no avail. "What's your problem? Get off of me! Star, that _hurts._" She hadn't noogied him this bad since fifth grade.

"Hell hath no fury, bitch." Black Star dug her knuckles into his skull with one last grueling twist before releasing him. Mako staggered and held his head as the pangs of pain subsided. "Feel that? That's mercy," Black Star said with crossed arms. "Remember, you live only because I allow it."

Black Star somersaulted over two rows of desks before landing in her seat. The crash of the ninja's body colliding with her chair woke Soul with a start. Her red eyes briefly fell upon Mako, and they held each other's gaze for two precious seconds before both of them looked away, too awkward and stubborn to admit their apologies. Stein started cutting open another innocent animal at the front of the class, but all Mako thought about was how much he hated this distance growing within their souls.

He sat beside Pat Thompson for the duration of class, valiantly attempting to take notes without thinking about Soul or strangling the demon pistol, who was busy blowing bubbles out of his nose and creating origami animals out of his notebook paper. Halfway through the lecture, Mako turned around to demand that Pat cut it the hell out when he noticed that weapon's sandy mop of hair was not covered by its usual beanie. Instead, the hat sat snugly on the head of none other than a disgruntled Death the Kid.

"Psst," Mako whispered, elbowing Pat. "Is Kid ok? She looks a little upset."

The younger Thompson grinned devilishly. "Bro made me promise to keep it a secret."

Now Mako was interested, because if the last couple days taught him anything, it was that there was a fine line between ordinary and extraordinary and he couldn't afford to mix up the two. "What's so secret about a hat? Is it a deja vu thing? I won't tell anyone, I just-"

A wad of paper hit Mako on the back of the head, and he twisted his body to look at a sneering Black Star. Mako scowled at the ninja, but he kept his mouth painfully shut for the rest of the lesson.

When class let out, Professor Stein casually approached Black Star and the other in the third row as they gathered their belongings. "Black Star, do you have an update for me?" she asked. "Anything new since we last spoke?"

"My nips tingle," Black Star said bluntly, causing Tsubasa to flush a deep red and cover his face.

The professor's eyebrow twitched. "Please update me when you have something relevant to report."

Mako, focused on the scythe sitting two rows above him, could only vaguely register the exchange between Stein and Black Star as he looked up at his partner with guilty green eyes. She, too, kept stealing glances at him, sometimes angry, and other times wistful. He felt so twisted up inside for making Soul so upset, even if he didn't fully understand why her reaction was so visceral in the first place. He had to apologize, to reassure her that he didn't hate her, to reassure himself that she didn't hate him either.

Pat thrust his paper sculptures into his backpack, not caring whether he crushed his works of art in the process. He stood up with his brother and meister, and they began to take off. Meanwhile, Soul walked with Black Star and Tsubasa in the opposite direction.

The scythemeister's heart followed Soul, but his body and mind took off after Pat. Reconciling with Soul would mean little if he couldn't protect her, and something told him that Kid had some answers.

"Hey, wait up!" Mako called out, chasing after the Thompson brothers and the grim reaper. While the other two didn't notice his approach, Pat turned around to greet Mako with a wide smile on his face. "Pat, you were going to tell me something," Mako said. "That secret? Remember?"

"Oh yeahhh," Pat put a finger to his lips and winked. Creeping up behind Kid, Pat grabbed the hat with his fist and ripped it off her head with a pronounced _floof. _The grim reaper yelped like a frightened cat and her hands flew to the crown of her head. Thought she tried to cover them, Mako saw the three thick white rings encircling her skull.

"_Whoah."_ That was a sight Mako never thought he'd live to see. Her sanzu lines were connected, which could only mean that she had matured into a fully-grown grim reaper.

The image of the stark white rings contrasted against Kid's inky hair sent a familiar wave of prickles down Mako's back. It was new, but it was also right.

"Patrick, you pissant," Eli said without humor. "Why did you even do that?" He swiped the hat out of Pat's hands and gingerly pulled it back over his quivering meister's head. Frowning, Eli shot him the look of a steel blade. "You saw nothing, got it?"

"Yes I di-mmmrph!" Eli slapped his hand over Mako's mouth. The demonpistol looked ready to throttle him, but Mako was saved by the sound of steady voice.

"Don't hurt him, it's alright." It was Kid. Though her hunched shoulders, rigid arms, and clenched hands suggested that she was extremely uncomfortable, her kind face indicated that she was at least making an effort. "It doesn't really matter who knows. Resisting my destiny is futile."

The elder Thompson released Mako with a grunt, and Kid held herself in a hug. "Apparently," she said. "I've already ascended as a grim reaper in the other timeline. My abilities have been in flux since yesterday." Her eyes darted to the ground. "No one will tell me the truth, but I suspect that's why mother has grown so weak."

"If you are already are a fully-realized grim reaper in the other universe, why are you so upset about it now?" Mako frowned, struggling to fathom the implications of his next thought. "You said it yourself. It's futile to resist destiny."

"I know I'm supposed to take mother's place one day," Kid said, tugging the edges of Pat's beanie to her ears. Her golden eyes became more haunted and tortured. "But this is too soon. I'm not ready. How am I supposed to function as a grim reaper if I can't even tie my shoes right on the first try? How can someone like me be Lord Death?"

"Lady Death," Pat quipped.

The semblance of calm and acceptance Kid had cobbled together began to crack and crumble. "I can't even get the title correct! Every hour, mother wastes away so I can have her power, but I don't really _want _it. I don't _want this. _What am I going to do? I'm lower than litter, a piece of worthless garbage, I can't-"

The taller weapon gently wrapped his arm around Kid and pulled her into a one armed hug, softly murmuring as Kid's breathing slowed and her anxiety calmed. Pat, sheepish, flanked the grim reaper on the other side and began to trace circles on her lower back. Mako wasn't sure what shocked him more, seeing someone as confident and put-together as Kid fall apart at the seams or watching her two hooligan weapons bring her back from the brink. Despite Kid's obvious aptitude and flawless skill, she, too, was dogged by self-doubt. Was recognizing his own lack of self-worth and confidence in Kid comforting or worrisome?

"Kid is a little overwhelmed," Eli explained. "She doesn't take change well, and we would prefer it if you didn't spread it around, alright?" Feeling guilty for causing Kid such strife, Mako nodded. "Cool. You think you can keep this whole thing on the DL for three hours?"

"Yeah, of course," Mako said. He blinked as the meaning of Eli's words fell into place. "What's happening in three hours?"

"Stein says she's gonna fix this whole universe thing after school," Eli said offhandedly. "No more déjà vu, no more bathroom panic attacks, no more premature ascensions to godhood. Everything goes back to normal."

The Thompsons were too absorbed in the task of calming and nurturing their meister to notice Mako step backwards and clutch the wall for support. Everything might go back to normal for Kid and her weapons, but for Mako everything normal and good and wonderful was going to be permanently severed. Three hours—how was he going to fix this in three hours? Though he had become obsessed with preventing Soul's second demise, the threat was still too surreal to take seriously. Nausea and heartache seized the scythemeister by the throat.

"Apparently, Stein figured out what was janky with the universe ages ago," Eli continued, unaware of Mako's internal panic. "All we got to do is bring this gal to the Death Room after school. That ain't so bad, right Kid?" He lightly shook his meister, who responded with an unenthused whimper.

"What was it?" Mako asked quietly. "What was it she found out?"

The trio shrugged in unison. "We dunno," Pat said. "She said everybody would flip a shit if they knew, so she was just not gonna tell anybody."

A rush of lightheadedness threatened to knock Mako off his feet. Flipping a shit sounded just about right to him.

"But yeah, don't go flapping your mouth," Eli said. "Two grim reapers is a big deal, and we don't people to freak out. Hey, try to enjoy it. After the big reset, we won't remember anything that happened in the past three days, so you could basically do whatever."

"It's like going blackout," Pat offered with a low chuckle. "But without consequences."

"Yeahhhh," Eli agreed. "Like blacking out. Anyways, let go of your inhibitions for once. Chill out, skip class, no one's gonna care."

There was no time to waste. After he recovered from his stunned daze, he murmured, "I need to talk to Soul."

The Thompsons glanced at each other, sporting matching grins. "Hell yeah, man!" Eli said.

"You know where she might be? Nevermind," Mako said, turning on his back to the trio. "I'll just look for her myself."

As Mako strode away from his friends and began poking his head in empty classrooms, he heard Pat calling after him, "Go get her, you dog!"

Empty classroom after empty classroom, Mako doggedly searched for his wayward weapon with new resolve and urgency. He didn't know what he was going to say to her or how he was going to fix this. What did you say to someone who had mere hours to live, but still had no idea their time was running out? Time, Mako realized now, was something he took for granted. He always viewed time as something that stretched forward indefinitely, an infinite road for him and those he loved to travel on together. But while his horizon was still off in the far distance, Soul's end was closing in.

Kid's words wormed their way back into his thoughts like a virus; resisting destiny was futile. Despair told Mako that he could try to save Soul as many times as he liked, but she was always going to end up lying on the ground, gutted, right before his eyes. The thought sapped Mako of strength and weighed down his feet like lead. Destiny could not be beaten, not by a scrawny screw-up like him. Was there a point to this useless exercise of lo-_friendship_ and heroism?

But before despair took hold, another unnamed emotion sent a storm of soft intensity blooming throughout his chest and rushing into his fingertips. He internally labeled this sensation "Stubbornness," but it was much more complex and powerful than a mere refusal to be proven wrong. Whatever it was, it was more than enough to spur Mako forward.

Shibusen was too enormous to search the old-fashioned way. Mako closed his eyes and extended his perception, allowing his wavelength to expand and envelop his floor. He quickly honed in on the familiar curlicue of her wavelength right next to Black Star's exuberant soul and Tsubasa's serene one. They were chilling on one of Shibusen's many balconies and outdoor landings, probably with the intent to skip their next class.

Soul must have felt his wavelength's touch, because she suddenly broke away from the others and came inside, her soul vibrating with anticipation and an edge of sorrow. He withdrew his wavelength, hopeful that maybe Soul was as ready to reconcile as he was.

Contrary to what he detected in her wavelength, Soul rounded the corner with her usual poker face in place, letting no hint of her inner turmoil rise to the surface. Mako stifled his own urge to reach out to her with both body and soul, because smothering Soul was never the right way to settle fights, even if it was his most immediate impulse.

"Hey you,' Soul said. Her cheeks pinked and she quickly added, "jerk."

"Listen," he said. "I wanted to apologize."

Her white eyebrows shot up to the ceiling. "Really? I thought that stick was never gonna come out."

"Yeah, yeah, very funny. But I'm being serious here." Mako paused, suddenly unsure of what he was going to say to her. He wanted to tell her everything, that he was so worried about her he couldn't sleep, that the thought of something bad happening to her again made him physically ill, that the warm sight of her now was the best thing he had seen all day. "I'm sorry for yelling last night," he finally said. "It made you feel terrible and that wasn't okay."

He waited for her to say something, anything, but Soul simply stared him in the face and said, "And?"

Mako blinked. "And what?"

"What about _the rest of it_?"

"What rest of it?"

Soul's blank expression was replaced with one of dumbfounded wonder. "Holy shit on a stick." she said, seemingly baffled at her meister. "I dunno, 'Sorry Soul for dropping you like a dirty butter knife?' Or maybe 'My apologies for acting like I don't need a partner anymore?'"

"I don't think those things," Mako said. Soul's eyes narrowed into slits, and he immediately backpedaled and said "I mean, I still need a partner. You, specifically. And I didn't mean to treat you like a utensil, honest. Aren't we cool?"

"Sure thing," Soul said, voice dripping with sarcastic bite. "We'll be cool once you quit acting like you have a freaking death wish."

Just like that, Mako was suddenly furious. "_I'm the one with the death wish_? All I did was keep you safe, I'm not gonna say sorry for something I'd do all over again."

She gave him the slowest, most infuriating eyeroll. "I don't care if you jump into a fight half-cocked and unarmed," she said, though her wavelength suggested she did care a great deal. "Just get used to the fact that I'm going to be right behind you no matter where you go."

Mako opened his mouth to argue when a new voice interrupted his thoughts. "What's this I've been hearing about a fight?"

Soul visibly stiffened at the sound of that voice, but Mako perked up and smiled. It was Dr. Medusa, who had been passing by in his trademark lab coat and stethoscope. The doctor's amber eyes were warm and sweet like honey, setting the meister at ease. "I'm sorry," Dr. Medusa said. "I've been avoiding the infirmary and I could not help but overhear."

"That's alright!" Maka said, relieved by Medusa's interference. Though it was strange to see the doctor wandering the halls. He was almost always confined to the clinic, bandaging students after supervised fights and prescribing painkillers to anyone stupid enough to challenge Black Star. "Why are you avoiding the infirmary?"

"Well," Medusa said with a hint of hesitation. His finger absentmindedly pulled at his pronged goatee. "I heard that Deathscythe was waiting for me in my office wearing nothing but a hospital gown, so I decided to seek out my patients for some checkups instead. You know how your mother can be." Mako screwed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He almost wanted Stein to reset the universe, if only to erase the image of his mother half-naked on a hospital bed from his mind.

"Now Soul," The doctor said with a good-natured timbre. "Mako is right, it isn't a good idea to rush into fights, not in your condition. You are still recovering from a significant trauma. Please, allow your body to rest, to heal."

"Finally!" Mako exclaimed. "Someone with some sense! If you aren't gonna listen to me, at least listen to him!"

A deep resentment flickered in Soul's red eyes, and he could almost see her building walls around her soul, shutting him out. That girl would be stubborn until the day she died, which could be very soon if the Thompson brothers were right. Mako opened his mouth to thank Dr. Medusa so he could drag Soul to Stein's office, the Death Room, _anywhere, _when a minute movement by the doctor's feet caught his eye.

It was almost too faint to see, but once noticed, its twitching movements and subdued glow was all Mako could pay attention to. He squinted and instinctively turned his soul perception up a notch, marveling as the figure slowly shifted into a concrete color and shape. It was small and thin, fluttering like a ribbon in the wind, with a pointed tip on one end. As the color solidified from faint lavender to an opaque purple, Mako spotted another one.

"It can take a long time to fully recover from a severe attack," Medusa said to Soul, not noticing that Mako's attention was absorbed by something on the floor. "Perhaps even years."

The purple ribbons were everywhere, writhing around their ankles while Soul and Medusa remained oblivious. The air itself began to take a purplish hue, and as one of the ribbons began to slink upward, Mako's eyes followed it, transfixed. They weren't just on the floor-they were in the air, pointing outwards like the tentacles of a sea anemone. As he concentrated, their color began to shift to a darker tone.

The hair on Mako's arms began to rise and shiver. This sight was not new to him.

"_There's nothing wrong with me_!" Mako tore his eyes away from strangeness around him to look at Soul, whose agitation was completely unmasked. She had taken a step backwards from the doctor, and rubbed her left wrist with a firm hand. Her soul, shining blue in the center of her chest, was completely visible. Mako hadn't consciously realized he was using his soul perception, but the small, beat-up wavelength of his partner made him painfully aware of it. If his soul perception was activated this whole time, then what were the ribbons dancing in the air?

"Of course there isn't anything wrong with you," Medusa said, flashing a smile Mako no longer felt he could trust. "But I am worried that you might be experiencing some additional symptoms you aren't telling me."

Staring at the doctor, Mako realized there was no soul glowing within Dr. Medusa's barrel chest. That either meant that he didn't even have one, which was unlikely, or that the meister was looking in the wrong place. The air rippled as it's purple color grew murky, and the cogs in Mako's mind whirred.

"I want to help you, Soul," Medusa said her name with an alluring hiss. "But I can't do that if you keep avoiding me."

A pointed ribbon-no, an _arrow_ swam across his vision.

With a sudden jolt up Mako's abdomen, the scorn and fear written on Soul's face began to make more sense. Arrows were snaking all around them, each and every one pointing out of the man who stood their center like rays of a corrupt sun. They were standing right in the middle of the man's soul, but that wasn't even the worst, most terrifying part. He knew this soul. Medusa was not the kind school nurse he said he was. Medusa was a fraud. Medusa was an enemy.

Medusa was a witch.

"It was you," Maka breathed, his epiphany flowing freely from his lips without hesitation. "You're the one who sent Cr-the demonsword. It was you the whole time."

The fraudulent doctor raised a razor thin eyebrow and made an expression that looked more amused than upset. "Well look at that," he said. "Free was telling the truth. You really do get more powerful." His lip curled into a perverse smile, and he shrugged off his lab coat to reveal the tattoos winding down his biceps. The ink began to writhe and lift off his skin, growing into a solid, flying viper. Though it looked poised to strike, the magical snake obediently laid down its head so its master could climb on.

"Soul!" Mako called. "Now!"

Soul, who had been gaping at the man she believed to be her doctor, immediately dissolved into blue light and leaped to Mako's hand. Mounted on his magic snake, Medusa began to fly down the hall, undeterred by the students and teachers bearing witness to his escape. He didn't care who saw him. After having his cover blown, Medusa's behavior suggested that whatever he did next, he didn't expect to lose.

Mako knew the odds were stacked against him, but he couldn't let the witch get away.

Soul's weapon form solidified in Mako's ready hand, but the moment he gripped her handle, searing heat flared beneath Mako's palms with the vengeance and speed of wildfire. The meister cried out and dropped his weapon, clutching his stinging hands as the scythe clattered to the floor. The skin of his ungloved hands was a blistering, agitated red. Hot smoke and the scent of burnt skin flesh wafted from the demonscythe's shaft.

"What's the hold up?" he heard Soul say. His perception, still large and sensitive to any and all wavelength fluctuations, felt feelings of rejection and anger wrack the scythe's wavelength. She thought he was throwing her to the side again, like she was a rusty, unwanted tool. He wanted to ask her to transform back so they could chase the escaping witch, but he didn't want to hurt Soul again. Gritting his teeth, he picked her up once more in a tight grip, and rushed forward.

The adrenaline of pursuit helped deaden the pain, but with every step he could feel the heat surge hotter into his bare palms. He tried to ignore the yells of his teachers as he barreled down the hall, but the combination of their voices and shining souls left him disoriented. The booming voice of Black Star specifically cut through the white noise, but Mako did not once look back or loosen his grip on Soul. The snake suddenly turned left, and Mako skidded on the slick hallway to make the turn. It cost him precious momentum and time.

Medusa's snake burst through a window, leaving Shibusen and all of its denizens behind. Mako finally dropped Soul's scalding form and staggered to the window. The snake was winding through the sky and into the horizon.

A glance at his raw, stinging hands made Mako wince. He could hardly clench his fists. He sensed Soul approaching him from behind alongside Black Star and Tsubaki. The weapon wavelengths were worried and concerned, but it was the ninja's woozy soul that gave Mako pause.

"Whoah," Black Star said faintly. "That snake guy, do we know him? Tsu, I kind of feel—" Her eyes rolled backwards, and she swayed where she stood before finally crumpling to the ground.


	7. Chapter 7

Medusa's laboratory had seen better days; restraining an immortal werewolf was not conducive to a clean, sanitized, orderly laboratory. Still, the werewolf proved to be a fountain of discovery more bountiful than any of Medusa's past experiments. If the witch had known all he had to do to learn about the strengths, development, and weaknesses of his enemies was to have a chit chat with a time traveler, he would arranged it a long time ago. The only problem was that he didn't like everything Free had to say.

Theories had to be tested, facts had to be proven. He needed proof that at least one of Free's prophecies held truth before he acted too rashly, to assuage any and all doubts. He had sought Soul Eater, whom he knew had been afflicted with the black blood, to test whether anything Free claimed was true. Like most scientific breakthroughs, however, Medusa had found his proof in the most unexpected way.

He wanted to gouge Mako Albarn's perceptive eyes right out of his head. It was humiliating to have his soul protect shattered by a mere one-star meister, especially one with a soul so fragile that Medusa could crush it between his thumb and forefinger.

In the lab, the werewolf was magically pinned to the ground, exhausted after hours of struggle. Medusa shed his doctor's coat-he didn't need that anymore now-and planted his foot directly onto Free's face.

"I have good news for you, Free," he said, wiggling his sharp toes and pressing down on Free's cheek. "After visiting Shibusen and collecting my own evidence, I have concluded that you didn't lie to me after all." The wolf groaned, and Medusa removed his foot. He didn't know how to kill Free, or if the werewolf could even be killed, so proving him right was much less troublesome in the long run. According to the wolf sprawled on his laboratory floor, Free and Medusa were allies once, in another time and another place. It was offensive how reluctant the wolf was to cooperate with Medusa in this timestream, but after literally pressing him to explain, Medusa learned the most unsavory fact.

"Crona?" Medusa's child and would-be murderer emerged from the shadows. Crona's spindly arms were wrapped around their torso, and their teeth gritted together in a permanent expression of anxiety and loneliness. The witch was still not convinced that his demise would be at the hands of his weak, shivering child. Then again, he also didn't believe Free when he claimed that Medusa was originally a woman, a fact which the witch found most disturbing. "I want you to stay here until Free and I come back. Do you think you could do that for me?"

"I think I can handle it, but not forever" the child said in their quivering voice.

"That's very good." His tattoos lifted from his arms and grew in size. "I might even bring you back a treat." The ungrateful child shrank backwards. Free's magical restraints lifted, and the enormous snake gingerly picked the werewolf off the ground.

Riding his trusted black viper with Free securely held between the snake's jaws, they slithered through the air and down, down into the bowels of the stronghold of Death herself.

* * *

><p>The sky over Death City darkened into a murky green, clouds of magic, chaos, and electricity swirling and snapping. The storm was coming, but none like Shibusen or the world had ever seen.<p>

Inside the safety of Shibusen's walls, Soul looked out the clinic window at the souring atmosphere. It was distantly familiar, like a dream or a thought she once had but could not recall. Her attempts to place this nagging trace of a memory ceased when she heard Mako audibly cringe behind her. He was sitting on a hospital bed, attempting to bandage his burnt hands on his own with a roll of medical tape in the crook of his elbow and gauze clutched in his mouth. In the bed next to him, Black Star lay unconscious in a heap. Professor Stein watched her students from afar, dryly amused.

"If you let me tend to your wounds," Stein said with voice as dry as the desert air, "then maybe they wouldn't hurt."

Stubborn as usual, Mako scowled and returned to his wrapping. To his credit, trusting Stein with medical assistance was always a last resort. Soul had nothing to complain about in that respect. The one time she needed the professor's expertise, the crazy woman actually saved her life. Funny how the adult the pair probably trusted the least was the one they immediately turned to after facing a witch.

Stein was not that surprised when she learned about Medusa's true identity, nor did she react when Mako had discussed the encounter with the Shewolf the day before. Her meister had seemed incredibly put out when his discovery was casually taken in stride, and he almost refused to even visit the infirmary. For some reason, Mako was bent on going to the Death Room. If his hasty bandaging was any indication, he was still planning to dash there at his first opportunity.

"I felt the strangest sensation of deja vu when I saw you were burned," Stein said, casting a critical eye towards the meister's palms. "I can only assume this is something you've encountered before."

"Melting my hands?" Mako asked.

"Losing your resonance." Stein's face was grim. "It's your soul wavelengths," she said. "They've fallen out of sync. If you want to continue wielding Soul as your partner, you will have to realign yourself to her wavelength." The professor's gaze shifted to Soul, sending goosebumps up her arm. "And vice versa."

That sentence caused Soul's heart to drop six stories. There it was. Though it did not occur the way she predicted, the unthinkable had finally happened. Her meister couldn't wield her anymore, and she was one reluctant step closer to becoming the demon she was hiding inside. Now that their resonance was broken-possibly for the second time-the call of the void screamed loud.

This wasn't the first time the scythe had experienced this. She remembered her wavelength rejecting Black Star's when they tried to fight Kid all those weeks ago, but her weapon form just became too heavy for the ninja to lift. She didn't actually hurt Black Star. Those burns though, they were violent, blistering wounds that must have been so painful as his fist encircled her handle. But even though she was literally scalding him, he held her anyway. So typical for Mako to throw her away when he needed her and to stubbornly hold on when she was hurting him.

"We can do that," Mako said with quiet optimism. "It doesn't sound too hard, does it Soul?" He looked at her hopefully, but Soul couldn't meet his eyes.

"You could, but our priority is Medusa," Stein said, examining a pencil holder on the witch's former desk. "I was actually beginning to have my own suspicions of him, no doubt due to deja vu. Of course, it would have helped if I could stare through a witch's soul protect."

"It would have helped if I'd known I was staring through a witch's protect," Mako said glumly.

Nobody bothered to explain the science to her, but Soul was savvy enough to figure out what was going on. Timestreams were crossed, indeterminate magical mumbo jumbo was happening, and her friends were manifesting the abilities of their future selves. Not only had Mako suddenly become a walking, talking telescope, but according to her meister, Kid had apparently become a fully-grown grim reaper. She absently wondered if the Thompson brothers would suddenly become deathscythes, or if Black Star would exhibit some crazy-ass power of her own.

"I never pegged you for a meister who could develop such keen soul perception," Stein mused, staring at the dark green sky through the clinic window. "But I suppose even I can be surprised."

Mako wrinkled his nose and clenched his fists, only to wince as his burns coiled and flared with pain. Soul wanted to slap his wrists and sternly remind her stupid meister not to mess with his wounds, but he seemed to get the message just fine by glancing at her disgruntled face.

With a groan, a decidedly groggy Black Star sat up on her hips and blew a raspberry. "Who cares about Mako's manstruation?" she rasped sleepily. "I wanna know when I get _my _future power-up. Future me could probably slay every one of you jokes."

"Says the girl who can't handle a little deja vu without falling on the floor," Mako murmured.

"You're just jealous that my regular senses are so sharp, I don't even _need_ an extra one," Black Star retorted. She shot Mako a triumphant look. "Just face it. Sensing stuff is the only thing you're good at." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the ninja swayed and collapsed backwards. While Black Star was capable of many feats of strength, speed, and endurance, her newly awakened sixth sense had taken its toll.

As if he intuitively knew when his meister was in trouble, Tsubasa appeared at the clinic door, panting from exertion. "I found Kid and the others," he said, absentmindedly rubbing the fringe of his hair between his fingers. "They're all with Lady Death in the Death Room. Is Star ok? She doesn't look any better."

"Her extrasensory perception is just overwhelmed," Stein explained. "There isn't much she can do but tough it out. The universe is crumbling as we speak-there is no time to lose." To Soul and Mako, she said, "I think it's best for you two to recuperate."

With one last, curt nod, Stein briskly left the room, her patched labcoat billowing behind her. Tsubasa picked his meister up off the bed and cradled her in his arms. "What am I going to do with you, Black Star?" he muttered. He carried her out of the room, bridal style.

Soul had been quiet the entire time that Stein was talking to Mako, and now that they were alone she still didn't know what to say to him. A seed of paranoia lingered in the back of her mind, but she pushed it aside to focus on a more immediate concern. "Those look awful," Soul said blandly, eyeing his hands.

"I would get them properly wrapped up but…" Mako shrugged with an ironic laugh. "The school nurse quit because he wanted to pursue his evil witchy plans. Kind of hard to get medical attention."

Soul sighed, grabbed his wrists, and began to methodically unwrap and rewrap his wounds. For once, Mako stayed completely silent as she worked, reacting to her touch only with the occasional wince. Beneath the bandages his palms were so red and raw, and bile rose in Soul's throat as she realized that she had done this to him. It was her handle that caused these welts to grow and burst on his pale skin. A perverse laugh echoed in the back of her mind, and she once again wondered whether she had become totally untouchable now. Even if she was able to resonate with a different meister, the thought of having someone other than Mako handle her weapon form was absolutely sickening.

"Thank you," Mako said quietly.

"Don't mention it," she said, tightening one of his bandages. He cringed but did not cry out. "Once you're patched up, I guess we'll just wait here." She wished she knew what it was they were waiting for.

Just as she finished fastening the bandage, Mako ripped his hand away from her. "No way!" he said. "There's some important stuff going down and-and it's important that I don't let it happen."

The scythe could feel her irritation rising, but her face remained opaque. "So you're down with the universe collapsing on itself," Soul deadpanned.

Mako jumped to his feet and began looking towards the exit. "You don't understand. I need to stop this, I need to do something. You stay here, and I'll-"

"You can't tell me to stay anywhere, I'm not your pet." She felt an inkling of satisfaction as Mako recoiled at the word 'pet,' but it didn't assuage her building ire.

"I just meant that it's something I have to do by myself, okay?" There was a nearly imperceptible change in the timbre of his voice, but although Soul could tell something was off about her meister, she couldn't put her finger on why.

Soul slowly stood up. Looking up at her tall meister while they argued was annoying, and she needed to see him eye to eye. "Enough with the bullshit Mako," she said between clenched teeth as she advanced upon her meister. "What is your damage?"

"My problem-it's, my problem-" He stumbled now that Soul was completely in his personal space, daring him to continue. "It's-I'm not strong enough."

She felt like vomiting and crying and screaming, and she wasn't sure which was going to happen when she opened her mouth. "Huh, so, so this is like a big _workout_ for you?" she said, her voice rolling through a couple different octaves as she spoke.

"No! No!"

"Then am I supposed to be some damsel who stays behind while you do the hero thing, is that it? Because that's not how partners work."

"Why is talking to you so hard? That's not-"

"Then what is it? Say what you mean!"

"I don't want to lose you!" His face was a collision of anguish and frustration, and his shoulders slumped as anguish ultimately won out. "I'm not strong enough. That's what I'm afraid of, okay."

Suddenly Soul did not feel like yelling at him anymore. "Why are you so afraid something is going to happen to me?"

Mako's voice was like a soft whisper in the wind. "Because it already did."

Soul didn't move or speak as her meister quietly and thoughtfully summarized his grand theory. Italy was supposed to be her end. In a future where Kid became Lady Death and Mako became powerful enough to peer straight through the strongest spell in existence, she was long dead, slain in an Italian church. It was numbing to hear him speak of her death with a faltering cracked voice, to see him shoot anxious glances at her to check her reaction. Honestly, it seemed a little unbelievable to her that the life of someone as messed up and useless as she could be so important to anyone, for anything.

As she listened to Mako, Soul braced herself for the rush of discordant tingling and icy creeping that the scythe had come to recognize as deja vu. It never came.

"I've been an idiot," Mako admitted. "I was afraid to tell anyone. I just-I just know whatever future lies ahead isn't right unless you're in it too."

The scythe shook her head in silence, because that was something she just couldn't agree with. The red demon, the embodiment of all her sick thoughts, didn't exist before Italy. It seemed plausible that it existed _because _of Italy, though it remained unclear to her why that would be. Regardless of its mysteries, Soul instinctively knew in the core of her being that the Oni's power could only corrupt. There were so many reasons Mako's plan to save her life were flawed. For one, Soul could very well turn into a serial killer in this second timeline, if her macabre dreams were anything to go by. And two, it was just too big a price to pay. Since when did her life warrant the sacrifice of an untold amount of memories, people, and planets? Especially now that her darkest thoughts manifested themselves in her psyche as a completely separate personality?

Soul blinked away the apparition of the Oni, grounding herself back in reality, but the echo of its deviant laugh lingered. "Maybe it's supposed to be this way," she said quietly. "One person just isn't worth a whole universe."

"Bullshit." Mako's adamantine spirit shone through his voice. "I don't care about the consequences. As far as I'm concerned, you're worth more than millions of lives and billions of stars put together!"

They both stared at each other, equally surprised by what Mako just said. He firmly shut his flustered mouth, and Soul's self-consciousness sleepily reared its head, subdued but not dead. It was all too surreal to be true. Keeping her face blank became a real struggle as a tumult of emotions raged within her. Was she supposed to interpret Mako's do or die attitude as a reflection of deeper, more secretive feelings? Or was she just projecting her own emotions, which were cavernous and unexplored as an ocean trench? The scythe didn't know what to say, how to react to this vague confession, so she did the one thing she knew she could always rely on in a emotional pinch.

She smirked. "You're an idiot."

Soul did not consciously decide to step forward She heard Mako's sharp intake of breath as her hand touched the back of his hair and tilted his head towards her. He wasn't breathing at all when their foreheads met. Their faces were so close, they both reflexively closed their eyes. They stood stock still, foreheads touching, shaky breaths mixing, noses sliding together, until Soul finally saw fit to quell the chaos in her head.

"You're stupid," she repeated. "Dying for my meister is the only cool way to go. Doesn't matter how or when it happens." Her throat constricted, and while Soul took a deep breathe to maintain her composure, it was still hard to calm her expression. She went crosseyed looking at his face. "You just don't get a say in this, okay? If I die keeping you safe, it's because I want to."

Mako finally opened his eyes and stared at the floor. "I hate this. Everything is so complicated. It would be so much easier if the world just stayed the way it was supposed to be. If I didn't mess up so bad and get you hurt. Sometimes…" His voice trailed off.

"What?"

"Sometimes, I wish the world was just us," Mako said, eyes flicking upward to catch Soul's. "You know?"

Her face felt so hot she could barely stand it. "Yeah, I do." They physically broke apart, but they felt closer than ever.

"There's something I need to tell you about too," she blurted out. "But, I don't think I can do it right now."

There was a question in his eyes, but Mako didn't press her. "Yeah, whenever you're ready." He looked down, perhaps to gather his thoughts, when his head snapped back up, Soul saw the fiery, indefatigable meister she had grown to adore. "You should transform. We-we have to help the others."

"In the Death Room?"

"No," her meister said, his face brightening as inspiration struck. "We should find the She-Wolf again. She's the one that did this, she's the one who can fix it, right?"

Soul looked at Mako's bandaged hands. "But what if I-"

"You're not gonna burn me again," he said with confidence. "Not this time. Come on, let's try it."

Still reluctant, Soul dissolved into a blue light and leapt towards her meister. She held her breath as her handle solidified in his hands, praying a flash of heat wouldn't send her clattering to the floor. Soul relaxed when Mako began to flex his fingers around her handle, testing his grip and refamiliarizing himself with her weight. He jerked her scythe blade upwards, stunned by something Soul herself could not see.

"Soul," Mako breathed in astonishment. He held her with two hands and gave her an experimental spin. She wasn't sure why, but Soul felt more invigorated and invincible than she ever had. Even her blade felt sharper as it sliced through the air. With one last twirl around his wrists, her meister abruptly halted his spinning and looked into her weapon eye. "You're _beautiful_."

Thank Death it was impossible to blush when your body was entirely made of metal. "What did you say?" Soul said quickly.

He pinked. "I mean, you're all gold and white now. The zigzag on your blade is different, and you've also got these cool-" Soul felt a sensation equivalent to tender fingers brushing the back of her neck, and her entire handle rattled. "_-spokes." _

It was indeed very good that metal weapons did not have circulatory systems. "Are you gonna just stand there tickling my _spoke_s all day, or are we gonna save the world?"

Mako seemed to finally remember himself, and he sharply withdrew his hand. "Nnnnng we're gonna save the world!"

"Hell yeah!"

Slinging her over his shoulder, Mako took off down the corridor, using only soul perception as his guide. The world passed Soul by in a blur, but she could tell by the mounting synchronization of their wavelengths that she had nothing to fear, not anymore.

The gears clicked into place, and a spark jumped between their souls as resonance began to build. They had never slipped into resonance so naturally before-another premature hint of what their abilities and relationship could become, if they let it. Though Soul could not see her meister charging forward, balanced as she was over his shoulder, she could very easily imagine the dilated determination in his eyes.

Their last encounters with the Shewolf and Medusa were child's play compared to what was coming. But this time, instead of groping around in the dark trying to preserve a fractured partnership, instead of sucuumbing to bottled fears and repressed love while the enemy got away, they were gliding on the same wavelength. Two souls, finally, fighting as one.

It wasn't until the pair was speeding deep into the Shibusen catacombs that Soul wondered why her scythe form had changed at all.


	8. Chapter 8

Neither student had ever ventured into the Shibusen catacombs before, but as they descended the endless steps further into darkness, the stone-bricked walls grew ever more familiar. Somewhere deep in the cavern, the Shewolf's soul burned brightly. Its wavelength was timid, perhaps even stressed, yet the vibes emanating from the beast's soul paled in comparison to the soul writhing beside it.

Whatever they were going to find down there, Medusa would be waiting for them.

Super strong soul perception was helpful because Mako already knew to expect the witch, but it did nothing to quell his nerves or fear. Several months ago, he felt more than ready to take down a witch and finally turn Soul into a deathscythe. It was only now that the gravity of fighting a full-grown, honest-to-Death witch really hit him. He could die doing this. Moreover, Soul could try to pull another heroic sacrifice à la Italy and get killed herself. That thought on its own was enough to make him turn on his heel and run in the other direction.

But he couldn't. Soul had said it herself-they were a team. They protected each other. This mission really was do or die.

"You slowing down?" Soul asked. Without answering his weapon, Mako launched into a sprint. Fear was hanging off him like a dozen weights, threatening to slow his feet and halt his pursuit. He couldn't afford second thoughts now.

The stairway came to an abrupt end, and at the bottom Mako almost tripped over his own feet as he skidded to a halt. The high-traction soles of his combat boots were both a blessing and a curse as they instantly gripped the floor and brought his momentum to a swift zero. Though he was somewhat rattled by the sudden drop in speed, it was what he found at the bottom of the stairs that threatened to stall his heart.

Two corridors extended before them. One was marked by a group of three strange eyes, staring at them from above with the judgment and terror of fallen seraphim. The other was swathed in impenetrable darkness, but otherwise unmarked. Mako looked back towards the first tunnel, and the uncontrollable shiver of a lost thought wracked his body.

"So what should we do?" Soul asked. She was communicating more with him now than they usually did in a fight, probably out of an effort to solidify their partnership. "Head down bizarre hallway number one or bizarre hallway number two?" The hieroglyphic trio of eyes bore down on them both, and while neither could doubt that something sinister and unspeakable lay down that hall, it was not yet time. Time for what, Mako couldn't say.

"Number two," he said with a shiver.

Though he knew Soul's weapon form was more or less incapable of movement, it almost felt like her handle physically relaxed in his hands. "Number two it is," she agreed. Swinging Soul back over his shoulder, Mako charged through the unmarked corridor, straight into the trickling darkness. He could hear nothing but his own footfalls, and his eyes were blind to all but the glowing green soul lying in wait.

As Mako's eyes adjusted to the lack of light, his keen eyes began to distinguish the outline of the walls and the markings on the floor. Nowhere did he see the three clustered eyes that sent so many chills through his core. Instead, strange arrows were drawn all over the floor, pointing in several directions. He saw the arrow-shaped tile long before he stepped on it, but it never occurred to Mako that stepping on one of the strange stones was a bad idea. The moment the steel toe of his shoe touched the ground, the arrow flung him to the left, sending the meister and weapon crashing against the stone wall. The sharp impact hit Mako squarely on his left shoulder, and he woozily sank to the ground while Soul clattered to the floor.

"Nothing like a vector plate to knock the stupid out of you," the weapon said wryly. Mako could practically hear the smirk growing on her smug face. The meister didn't question how Soul knew what vector plates were called, nor did he wonder who set that trap in the first place. After several days of deja vu rushing at them with the strength of a stampede, his senses had become in tune with their fluctuations. He had spent so long fighting and examining deja vu that he never considered letting it thrust him forward. With an open mind, deja vu could become as accurate a guide as soul perception. The pair just needed to stop it before it got out of control and stole what mattered most.

Vector plates were laid everywhere throughout the hall, each pointing towards nearby walls or each other. If Mako stepped on the wrong one, he and Soul would be hurled across the room and into another wall, or even thrown towards another vector arrow, trapping the pair in an endless cycle of bouncing between each until the end of time. Jumping to his feet, he looked towards his weapon, who patiently remained transformed while her meister got his bearings. Mako couldn't run into battle half-cocked and unarmed. He had to be smart about this, for both his and Soul's sakes. He retrieved Soul and whipped her around his head with a swift flourish before pressing onwards, vaulting over vector plates with practiced ease.

Just as suddenly as they became immersed in darkness, the corridor was flooded with green light. Despite the coolness of the catacombs, Mako's yellow sweater felt stifling, suffocating, and he could feel the sweat of adrenaline and fear soaking into the armpits of his white shirt. His hands still stung from their burns, but Soul's wrapping job did well to dull the pain. Because he was so focused on his heightened sight and unease, Mako failed to pay attention to soft serpentine sigh echoing off the walls, the sound of scaled flesh gracefully sliding on cobbled floor, or a long tongue flickering in and out of sinister jaws.

It was Soul who noticed its presence first, and the twang of alarm in her soul wavelength spurred Mako to whirl around and immediately block an oncoming attack. The fangs of an enormous black viper were deflected by Soul's long handle, and its canary-yellow eyes burned bright in the darkness. It had no soul that Mako could see, and while he doubted that it was a real snake in the sense that it was naturally born in the wild, it was just as fierce and tangible as any deadly creature.

It reared its arrow-shaped head high above the weapon/meister pair, and as the snake hissed and lunged and Mako guarded and attacked, he began to react faster, hit harder, think quicker. Years of experience and skill he still hadn't yet accrued crept into every movement, and Soul became lighter in his hands with each passing second. As his amateur clumsiness ran off him like rainwater, a resonance began to build between the two partners, rising and falling with a cadence as natural as breathing.

The arc of Soul's scythe was music in motion. Who would believe that up until less than an hour ago, partners that had never managed a viable witchhunter would suddenly gain such synchronicity? Hell, their wavelengths had been recently so out of sync that Mako could not even touch his weapon, let alone wield her with the power of a perfect storm.

The tight meshing of their souls allowed him to pick up fragments of Soul's thoughts, small bursts of emotion that seemed to alternate between anxiety and affection, most of it directed at him. Mako saw an opening and sank Soul's blade into the viper's neck, black-colored muck spurting from the wound and onto his sweater, and he felt elation and triumph roll off her soul in excited waves. He was still wrapping his head around his newfound adeptness, but she wasn't surprised at all.

_You're amazing._

"Thanks," Mako panted aloud. The snake, skewered on Soul's blade, released a sharp death rattle before dissolving into black ink and grime. Definitely not a real snake. The scythe's curved blade was coated in the black goo, but if she was at all repulsed by the remains of the beast, her soul wavelength did not show it. In fact, she seemed immensely pleased with herself. Mako's boots and clothing also sported dark new stains. In a moment of completely inappropriate banality, the meister wondered if their laundry detergent was strong enough to get them out.

"Any sign of Medusa?"

Soul's voice brought Mako's thoughts back to the here and now. He whirled around, using his perception to look in every direction. Medusa's soul blinked into existence

"He's near," Mako said. "The Shewolf is somewhere beyond him, though."

"So to get to the werewolf, we first have to-"

"Right, get past him first." Though his soul was quivering with anticipation and nerves, Mako cracked his shoulders in a show of bravery. Guys usually cracked their knuckles and stuff before running into fights in the movies, and he hoped emulating them in this dire moment would somehow strengthen him, pump him up so he could fight his way to victory. In reality, it just made him feel ridiculous and woefully unprepared for what lay ahead.

"Killing this witch can't be _that _hard," Soul said. "We already did it once."

"Blair isn't a _real _witch."

"I don't mean Blair."

He looked at his weapon quizzically, and even though she was mired with black gunk, he was struck speechless by her shining, gilded beauty. Her blade hummed with power. Turning her over in his hands, it finally dawned on Mako what exactly had spurred her transformation.

His Soul Eater had become a deathscythe-or at least she did in the other reality. In spite of the terror he felt about facing a witch, Mako started beaming uncontrollably. They did it. They did it! In the midst of his consuming elation, there was really only one word he could bring himself to say.

"_Neat." _

"Please do not fanboy over me," Soul said, though judging by the purring satisfaction vibrating off her wavelength, she wanted to be fanboyed over a lot. Wielding a deathscythe was a confidence booster, but what Soul said next wiped the smile off the meister's face.

"Remember what I said about me choosing how, when, and for who I die?" Soul said. Frowning, Mako looked into Soul's scythe eye. Despite its new and improved design, it looked back at him with that same unyielding gaze he had known since they first partnered. "I meant it."

Though it made him unhappy, Mako nodded. "Gotcha," he said quietly. He had a lot to say on the subject, mostly in his loud and authoritative meister voice, but the time for quibbling over who was going to be dying for who had passed. They were stronger than they had ever been, they were facing their toughest opponent yet, and they couldn't afford any divisiveness now. He wondered if he should use this moment to unload all of his unsaid feelings, get it all out in the open before they walked straight into death's arms. Then again, that was exactly what deathbeds were for.

He did not run down the corridors this time. Walking slowly and deliberately, the meister used his perception to navigate the dark halls, a sense of impending doom weighing down his shoulders as he drew closer to Medusa's soul.

When they did find the witch, he was dressed differently than Mako pictured he would be. Dr. Medusa had always been the kind, soft-spoken school nurse, identifiable by his long, loose labcoat and pronged goatee. Now he was dressed entirely in black, and his arms were curiously bare. An itch of deja vu alerted the meister to the fact that the witch had no arm tattoos, not anymore. The inky stains on his sweater and scythe blade were enough to deduce where they had gone. The witch himself was sitting on top of an arrow-possibly a tail?-and looked decidedly bored.

"Finally," Medusa said. Mako opened his mouth to say something-didn't people usually talk a lot before entering combat?-but a dozen black arrows sprang from Medusa's body and shot towards him.

He tried to initiate resonance, but Soul failed to meet him halfway. Judging by the feedback from her wavelength, it wasn't that she was out of sync. She was...distracted. Occupied. He

"What exactly is it that you're trying to do?" Mako yelled, cutting down a wave of vector arrows.

Medusa's lip curled. "I want to live."

With a wave of his arm, another onslaught of vectors arrows hurtled towards the Shibusen students. "I have no use for a world I no longer exist in," Medusa said. "The Wolfman and I are going to erase it."

The witch's words caused Mako to pause, allowing a vector arrow to cut the sleeve of his sweater. He was becoming careless. Not only was Mako sorely out of his league, even with the added boon of deja vu, but he also shared a goal with someone who was undisputedly evil. What did that mean for him, for them? They traveled to the depths of Shibusen's catacombs to stop Medusa, but was that even what he wanted to do?

Mako dove behind a pillar, narrowly dodging half a dozen more vector arrows. He pressed his back to the old stone, panting, gripping Soul between clenched fists. He could feel a stinging cut on his cheek, two more on his upper arm, which meant that he wasn't as good at dodging the arrows at he thought he was. These were only minor flesh wounds, but how long could he keep this up until Medusa landed a fatal blow?

"Tactical retreat," Mako whispered to his weapon. "Let's not risk more than we have to. If we make it back down the hall, I bet he won't even bother following."

"Are you _nuts?" _was his weapon's indignant response. "Did you not _hear _all that stuff about replacing the old timeline with this one? We can't just _let it happen!"_

"Yes we can," Mako said fiercely. "We totally can. I mean, what's wrong with the universe we got now? I say we take the win, run for our lives, and find some backup. Maybe we can kill him later."

"Bullshit." Though she did not currently have any physical lungs, he heard his weapon sigh. "While you've been fighting, I've been thinking."

The impact of three vector arrows wracked the entire pillar, and Mako tightly retracted his elbows to avoid being pierced. "Oh, nice," he said through his teeth. "No _wonder_ we're losing. I'm out there risking my neck and bleeding in three places, and you've been daydreaming this whole time. Fan-flipping-tastic."

Soul physically twisted her own scythe blade around to look at him, the metal of her handle groaning with resistance. "Well maybe you should stop talking and just listen to me for two fucking seconds!"

Despite being in the form of an inanimate object, she was yelling at him so fervently that she was almost jumping out of his hands. He heard the impact of two more vector arrows against the pillar. That no arrows tried to snake around and skewer them against the wall meant that Medusa's vectors didn't have unlimited reach. Or that the witch wanted to force them into the open so he could watch as the students were sliced to smithereens. One of those.

"Listen to yourself!" Mako said, tightening his grip on Soul. "Do you like being dead? Is that what you want? Becoming a deathscythe doesn't make you invincible."

"_How am I a deathscythe if I'm supposed to be dead?"_

The meister opened his mouth, but no reply came out. His throat felt too dry to speak, and the cogs in his mind began to slowly tick.

"I know there's an explanation for that," he finally said. "I just haven't thought of it yet."

The sound of a crash and crumbling rock thundered overhead, and Mako performed a forward roll away from the collapsing pillar. Medusa was definitely playing with them, and he was tired of his prey hiding. The adrenaline of escaping death and immediately spinning Soul to fend off vector arrows from multiple directions prevented the meister from thinking through what his weapon said. Both his soul and his mind was entirely focused on survival, nothing more. His weapon's soul meshed with his, showing that she, too, had her head in the game.

When he blamed Soul's lack of focus for their piss poor fighting, it was only because he needed to think of a good jab. Mako didn't truly believe what he said, but now that their souls slipped into a comfortable resonance and they adopted a laser-like focus on their opponent, it seemed that he was right. With every slash and deflection, they were getting better. Better yet, they were getting closer to the witch.

Mako heard the witch call out a spell, and a dozen vector plates materialized on the floor. He maneuvered around and over them with the skill and finesse of a practiced acrobat, even using a few to propel him forward. The meister began to feel the creeping of deja vu, numbing his limbs and disassociating his mind. It was him whirling his deathscythe, slicing through vectors, diving for the kill, but the tight cartwheels, the adept footwork, the rapid fire somersaults-that wasn't him at all.

The meister hardly registered Soul's blade transforming in a shining witchhunter, and he almost missed watching it slice through Medusa's abdomen. Killing a witch, it turned out, was more visually spectacular than he had read about. The moment his blade pierced Medusa's body, bursts of purple and red shot out of the wound, flying in every direction. Mako fell directly on his ass and watched in wonder as the red energy spewed out. Arrow-shaped tatters accumulated on the ground like molted feathers, and Medusa wheezed with pain before finally going limp.

Still on the floor, the two looked at Medusa's corpse for a moment, speechless. There was no soul to be found around the body. Based on what he knew from Stein's class, there was only one explanation for this.

"Can I eat it now?" Soul finally asked.

"There's nothing to eat!" Mako said in disbelief. "He exploded his own soul, just so we couldn't have it."

"You're kidding." she said, her voice caught between a despondent whimper and a curse. "What the hell, that isn't fair!"

Mako leaned on his scythe for support and hoisted himself off the ground. No, it wasn't fair for Medusa to have the last word by withholding his soul, but at least they weren't dead. Speaking of, there was a Shewolf-or a Wolfman, apparently-that they desperately needed to talk to.

He wasn't that far beyond the chamber where Mako and Soul had so unceremoniously ended Medusa. The witch had perhaps down them a favor by restraining the beast to the floor. Upon seeing the students, the wolfman immediately tried lurch upwards, only to be dragged back down by the magical chains sizzling against his fur.

"Listen," the werewolf said. "These chains hurt my wrists. If you get me out, I'll do what you want."

The wolfman's beady eyes stared into Mako's own. He was dangerous, evil even, but he didn't deserve to be bent to Medusa's will. Still, the meister needed some form of assurance. "You swear you'll fix everything and end your time-traveling villainy for good?"

The werewolf hacked a harsh laugh. "Are you kidding me? I'll gouge my eye out and go back to jail before I do this again," the werewolf said candidly. "This was the worst three days _I've _ever had, and I've had a lot of bad days. This was worse than 200 years in prison, worse than that time on London bridge, worse than the clusterfuck on the moo-" He suddenly shut his mouth as a thoughtful look crossed his face. "You know, maybe I should keep this stuff to myself."

The werewolf wasn't exactly the most trustworthy ally, but his soul was sincere. Without a word, Mako and Soul resonated and fired up witchhunter. It took only four clean, swift slices to free the beast. The meister sensed the prickling of recognition, yet there was something off about the werewolf. It was similar to the way Mako felt when he found his socks in his pants drawer, or he accidentally went through his morning routine in the opposite order. The werewolf was out of place, out of time. He didn't belong.

"I'm never gonna get used to this," the wolfman said with a wrinkled nose, gesturing between the weapon and meister. "This universe is weird and I don't like it."

The meister felt vaguely offended by this, though he wasn't sure why. "I don't _care _if you like it or not," Mako said. "You said you'd do what we tell you to so-" What was he going to tell the werewolf to do? It felt wrong to go along with Medusa's plan, but it felt even more unnatural to risk Soul's life as well. Then again-Mako frowned and pressed his lips into a thin line-it was possible that Soul wouldn't be so dead after all. Two realities were pressing into each other, combining into one, and instead of having weird visions of dying like he thought she would, Soul became a deathscythe. As disappointing and humiliating as it was to admit, he could have been wrong.

Mako felt the weight of Soul's scythe across his shoulders dissolve, and in a flash of light she rematerialized in human form by his side. The black stains and scuffs on her weapon form vanished now that she was human again, and she was easily the most pristine thing in the entire room.

"Wolfguy," Soul said quickly. "Before we do anything, I need to ask you something."

"Name's Free," the werewolf supplied.

"Right. So, am I dead?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

Mako's hands flew to clutch his skull, because you didn't reveal your motives to a potential enemy _ever, _and Soul "Queen of the Poker Face" Eater Evans had just tipped their entire hand to an immortal time-traveling monster with a criminal record. "_What are you doing?"_ he whispered to her.

She glanced at him sideways. "Getting a little confirmation. I'm done being Schrodinger's Cat."

Before Mako could ask whose cat, Free supplied an answer. "I know for a fact you ain't dead because, well," The werewolf chuckled and scuffed his feet on the ground. "_I _tried to kill you a couple times. It didn't work so well."

Soul turned to Mako, and after giving him a blank stare for five seconds the corners of her mouth began to inch upwards, rising and rising until she flashed him the most self-satisfied and smug expression that had ever graced her face.

"I think I can fix what I did," Free continued scratching his head. "Maybe even on the first try." The weapon and meister both shot the werewolf withered looks, to which he took immediate offense. "This is harder than it looks. Time isn't an exact science, you know."

"But," Mako started. Nothing was certain, not anymore. The fact that completing some universe-altering ritual was the only solution was scary as hell. Sure, Free said Soul was in the clear, but could they really trust him? "We have no idea what we're returning to. What if our lives are worse?"

A soft hand threaded into his own. He looked to his side and saw Soul, staring at him with a love and warmth he never thought he would ever find there.

"But what if they are better?" she asked. Mako had no ready answer, so he squeezed Soul's hand and relented. Squeezing his weapon's hand, Mako screwed his eyes shut and tensed his shoulders, bracing himself for whatever cataclysmic reshuffling that was about to commence.

The world changed without a shout or shudder. He remembered, absently, that he never asked Free about why he found their universe so strange in the first place, but like a child slowly drifting to sleep, the impulse to remain conscious melted away like clean snow.

* * *

><p>Though he had been through a lot of weird stuff in his young life, Soul never thought he would pull a Benjamin Button and become fourteen and depressed again. Or that he would sprout boobs for a <em>second<em> time. At least this time around he got to keep his personality and wardrobe. Whatever the hell Free had done, it must have worked because Soul was back in his room, laying facedown on the floor.

As the scythe began to unscramble his thoughts and figure out what the hell exactly happened to him, he realized that he was still laying on top of his meister, who looked a little winded herself. The two made eye contact, and in a movement as fluid and natural as breathing, Soul closed his eyes and leaned towards his meister. The gap between them vanished, and he pressed his lips to hers with urgency and want.

"I feel like I've wanted to do that for years," he murmured.

Breathless, Maka nodded. "Ditto."

Hindsight was 20/20, and even though the partners couldn't help kicking themselves for being so dumb during the Deja Vu Debacle, they could at least agree that middle school was terrible no matter how many times you went through it. They were comparing notes and laughing around the kitchen table when their feline roommate, clad in more clothing than usual but less than was socially acceptable, casually mentioned that she had realized their genders were switched immediately. In her shock and indignation, Maka nearly regressed to a fourteen-year-old boy-again.

"You knew?" the meister accused. "You knew what had happened _and you never told anyone?"_

Blair shrugged and shot a pouty look at her roommate. "Nobody asked me. I'm just a poor, uneducated kitty cat. People look down on me, you know."

"But _how?"_

The cat rolled her amber eyes. "It was so obvious. Soul took ten minutes to put his bra on right, and you were acting all testosteroney. Plus everyone had double the amount of souls. It was so obvious, I thought everyone knew."

As Maka interrogated Blair, Soul pondered what it meant to have double souls. He assumed he had his original soul now, but where did the second one come from? And after they changed back, where did it go? If someone was dead in one universe, did that mean they only had one soul? While to was incredibly satisfying to know that he and Maka had the honors of offing Dude Medusa, they never got a chance to see how many souls he had when they cut him open. And Blair, she was down to seven souls now, so how many did she end up having as a dude? Having eaten both a cat and a witch soul, the scythe could not help but feel a little disappointed that all those two-for-one meals were gone for good.

"It's a shame that you lost all those extra souls," Soul mused aloud. "Just seems like a waste to destroy them all."

Blair's lips twitched and shifted into a perverse smile. "Destroyed?" she purred. "Now why would I do that when tomcat Blair still needed them?"

"…tomcat Blair?"

* * *

><p>Soul was holding her breath, flinching for the deconstruction of her reality and the soul dissolution that would surely come with it. Mako squeezed her hand tightly and hummed to himself, similarly tense with anticipation. After a couple moments more, she cracked an eye open. There had been no amazing colors, no bright lights, and no shaking earth. The only sensation she felt, save for Mako's vice grip, was a fateful weight lifted from her chest.<p>

Right when she thought it was finished, there was a brief, intense drain on her soul, sapping her of the strength of her deathscythe form. Oh well. She hadn't earned it anyway.

Free had disappeared, hopefully transported to his correct plane of existence.

"Is it over?" Mako asked, his eyes still squeezed shut. "Has it even started? I can't tell."

"I think so," Soul said. She thought the sudden absence of her deathscythe abilities would leave an aching absence in her soul, but the scythe had already forgotten what the invincibility and strength even felt like. "Free's gone."

"What!" Mako finally opened his eyes and let go of her hand. He searched the dark room, squinting and biting his lip as he stared at the wall. He, too, was discovering that his improved perception had dulled. He huffed. "That bastard never fessed up about what he did to our universe," he grumbled. "Now we'll _never_ know."

Soul wanted to suggest maybe asking Professor Stein when they got back to Shibusen, but she knew Mako was too proud to just ask for the answers. "At least you were wrong about me being dead," Soul offered. "That has to be a silver lining."

"That's right!" He was immediately back at her side, and took both her hands in his. "When I convinced myself you were supposed to die, I didn't know what to do. I tried so hard to beat destiny that I almost pushed you away completely. I'm really sorry for being a jerk—"

"I was a moody jerk too," Soul added. She reminded herself to tell him all about Oni when they got out of here. The scythe didn't need déjà vu to know that Mako would stay by her side, regardless of what her inner demons threw at her.

"But you're right," the meister continued. "The real victory here is that we're both okay, and we're going to be okay for years and years, and thought of just us getting stronger together just kind of makes me—" The flood of words falling from his mouth stopped suddenly, and his green eyes grew intense. "I never thought I would be so glad to be so wrong, you know?"

Her chest ached, but not for lost or forgotten powers. "I know."

The scythe began to close her eyes and imperceptibly lean towards her meister. The gap between them shrank, but at the last moment they both froze like deer caught in the middle of traffic.

"What, what are you doing?" Mako blurted, dropping her hands.

Soul's eyes snapped open, and her body lurched backwards and she stared at him with sucked-in lips. What was she doing? "I dunno," she mumbled, wide-eyed. Their faces had been way too close for comfort. Her cheeks threatened to flush as crimson as her eyes; it was too uncool and embarrassing to bear. "Let's get out of here," the scythe said quickly. "This dank basement creeps me out."

He chuckled, nervousness palpable in his voice. "You're right. Let's go."

Though awkward and anxious, they filled the silence of the Shibusen catacombs with thoughts of bright, unknowable future. "You were badass as deathscythe. And so was I!" Mako's voice echoed down the hall. "It's too bad we lost all of our cool skills. But we can get stronger again, together."

"Yeah, yeah, back to the grind," Soul groaned. They disappeared up the stairs, returning to the light, once again free to cut their own path and forge their own destinies.

For several moments, nothing stirred in the now-empty chamber, stillness once again enveloping the catacombs. But then, from the darkness emerged a single strand of a soul, which slithered across the stone blocks with uncanny speed. It crept down the hall, following the meister and weapon pair up the stairs with stealth and simmering vengeance.

He lost to children, but he was still alive, and that was the important thing. And thanks to spoilers provided by that oafish _dog, _he was going to remain alive for a long time. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he did not pursue the unaware children.

Armed with knowledge not even the gods knew, Medusa slunk away, free to live another day in another universe.


End file.
